Fallen Angel
by GeneralSherman
Summary: Angela Ziegler finds herself going down a very dark path after everything she cares about is destroyed, one overlooked by shadows and shared with good men turned wrong. It is up to Genji and her friends at Overwatch to show her the light before she goes past the point of no return and pays a terrible price. (Sequel to War of Peace and Altered Reality. Includes mild Gency shipping.)
1. Chapter 1: Unexpected

Angela Ziegler never saw it coming.

One moment she was briskly pacing the halls of the Johann and Elin Ziegler Memorial Clinic and Care Center for the Sick and Injured, just about to round a corner while mulling over a datapad of her patients, and the next moment she was on the ground, having bumped head-on into someone coming from the opposite direction.

 _Verdammt_ , she thought to herself. _This is time I can't afford to lose right now_.

As she shook her head from side to side and massaged the part of her forehead where she had made impact, she slowly searched around the floor for her pad, a task made difficult by the temporary blurred vision of her impact. Her sight cleared up, however, long enough to recognize just who it was she had run into.

"I'm terribly sorry Minister O'Deorain. I must not have seen you coming." Angela explained, extending a helping hand after she herself had gotten back up onto her own two feet and had successfully recovered her notes.

"Evidently." Moira mumbled derisively under her breath as she accepted the clinic's founder's assistance.

Straightening her tie and brushing aside an errant lock of auburn hair, she noticed the datapad clutched tightly in Angela's hand. "Whatever's on there must be extremely captivating." she said, a hint of sarcasm showing.

Angela noticed the observation and was far from keen to follow up on it; Moira O'Deorain had always been a person she had kept her distance from, a practice dating back to the last few years of Overwatch. Despite this and the fact that the Irish geneticist couldn't have been more different from the Swiss medic if she had tried, the two had constantly found themselves in relatively close proximity. First Overwatch, then Oasis, and now even in the supposed sanctity of the clinic, Angela couldn't help but notice (and be none too happy about) the fact that the circles she ran in so often intertwined with such disreputable characters.

She grasped her datapad tighter, holding it close to her chest. "It's nothing, really. Just looking over a few patient files, making sure everything's going smoothly." she answered hurriedly.

"Ah, yes. I have noticed that you run a tight ship. Very impressive considering how busy you keep yourself."

Angela checked her datapad over again, if only so she had an excuse not to make eye contact. "I have to be. If I'm not around to help my patients, I'd hate to imagine just what could happen."

Moira chuckled. "I'm sure your staff are just as capable as you are."

"Thank you. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm needed elsewhe-"

Before she could walk away, Moira extended her withered, black-veined hand outward, blocking Angela's path.

"There is a reason why I've paid you this visit." she stated, eyeing the doctor despite her best efforts to avoid it. "You may have forgotten, but today's the beginning of the joint effort between the Ministries of Genetics and Medicine."

Angela turned her head away and hid a scowl; The last thing she wanted was a former Blackwatch agent and current Talon associate getting her grubby hands on technology meant to save lives. "I thought that the motion had been denied." she queried, hiding her anger under curiosity.

"Yes well, I was able to appeal the decision and have the vote taken again. Opportunities such as this one simply can't be passed over if progress is to be made."

 _If by 'progress', you mean 'weaponization'._ "I've informed the Ministry that my nanobiotics are fine as is. To alter the formula would be simply change for the sake of change."

Moira chuckled and let a sly grin spread. "But there's the rub; It's not that in the slightest. What we'd be doing is expanding the horizon, that's all." She placed her withered hand on Angela's shoulder. "Pacifism is fine to an extent, but don't tell me you haven't dreamed of the possibilities beyond simply making the blind man see or the crippled man walk."

Even through her scrubs, Angela could feel the icy touch of the hand as it leeched away at her energy like a parasite. "I have," she answered bluntly as she flicked the minister's hand off her shoulder. "and I wake up in a cold sweat every time."

Moira hid a flash of anger under a confident smile. "Come come now, I'm sure you'll find soon that nanobiotics have endless potential. But for now, I suggest you take the rest of the day off."

Angela's expression turned from disinterest veiling disgust to definite surprise. "Excuse me?"

"You've been working yourself too hard, my dear. I know you've said before that you're fine, but if you keep up this pace you'll drop dead, and as I've said before, your staff are just as capable as you are."

"I-I'm afraid I simply can't. There's too much work to be done without my superv-"

Moira shut her up with a sallow, dark-veined finger over the doctor's lips. "As a Minister of Oasis and therefore your superior, I insist." After sliding her finger down Angela's chin, she grasped the datapad, slowly but forcefully wrenching out of the doctor's firm grip. "Don't worry, I'll see to it that everything is taken care of. You have my word."

Angela glared back for almost a minute, trying to find the words that would allow her to rebut the argument placed before her, but rather than a scathing comeback, all she was able to utter was an angry sigh before trudging away.

After peering around the corner and assuring that Angela was a safe distance away, Moira placed two fingers on an earpiece. "We're in the clear. The clinic is defenseless and your target is on her way."

"Good." a raspy voice hissed on the other end. "You know what to do."

As he said this, Moira reached the end of the hallway she was in. Where the path she walked met its end, a doorway marked _Central Nanobiotic Processing and Activation_ greeted her by gliding open soundlessly. On the other side of the doorway stood her objective; an immense machine with an aesthetic reminiscent of the very oldest computers made nearly a hundred years before, but with holographic displays instead of screens. Sprouting from the top of this device like branches from a tree were numerous tubes that ran up through the ceiling and through the rest of the building, drawing forth and distributing like water from a well a life-giving beam of yellow energy that flickered intermittently.

"Indeed." Moira replied through a slick grin as she reached into her pants pocket and pulled out a vial of black liquid. Shaking it lightly, she watched with wicked anticipation as the solution swirled and small, misty wisps ascended until they reached the stopper and coalesced like the winds of a storm. "It's an old experiment, but one that never produces bad results."

"It had better not." the voice snarled before the feed on the earpiece turned to static.

 _It seems Lacroix was right when she said he takes things too personally_ , Moira mused to herself. _Ultimately though, it's mutually beneficial. The Son of York gets the chance to make glorious summer from the winter of his discontent, and I get to try a new variation of my greatest experiment_.

With that, she locked the door behind her, leaving nothing left to stand between her and her twisted purposes. With the twist of the cap, she opened the vial and placed it upside down into a slot on the central machine. Standing back, she took in the awe-striking spectacle of her triumph as the liquid rapidly contaminated the nanobiotics, turning them the same sickly black colouration.

Raising the datapad in front of her, she opened a new page and jotted down several notes based on her observations before opening the door and disappearing in a puff of inky mist.

* * *

As much as Angela hated to admit it, Moira was right about one thing; She was working extremely hard as of recent.

The realization confronted her as she arrived back at her home, a town house in a suburb of Oasis, and was immediately confronted by a sea of mail piled at her doorstep, the dates of some of which dated back nearly two months.

 _Two months_ , she thought. _Has it really been that long?_

Two months before, she had barely been clinging to life, lying in a hospital bed in Watchpoint: Gibraltar's sick bay in an exquisite gown stained with her own blood, the product of being impaled with a giant steel hook during the disaster that was Versailles.

But teetering on the brink of death wasn't the problem, not compared to what had led up to it. For the first time in eight years she had had something to do with Overwatch and she paid the price; Two hundred Omnics dead in the blink of an eye, all of her hard work towards promoting peace gone faster than she could snap her fingers. She'd laid in that bed for over three weeks, most of which she spent in a coma. While she was detached from the world around her, her subconscious played around in the darkest recesses of her mind. For brief periods she could hear people saying and doing things, but the details were drowned out by a horrific nightmare, one so unforgettable it rewound and played back even during such slow moments as these:

* * *

 _She lays on the floor in the ballroom next to the lifeless frames of the Omnic dignitaries, the hook still embedded in her stomach. Blood pours out like a wellspring, gurgling every laboured breath she takes. She tries to close her eyes or to roll onto her back, but she finds she can't move. Around her, she watches, utterly helpless, as Overwatch fights back. One by one they're slaughtered until only Genji remains. Her heart leaps into her throat as he draws his katana, only to have it wrenched out of his hand by Reaper as he tackles him to the ground. As he raises a combat knife he's taken from his coat and plunges it through Genji's heart, she makes a pathetic kitten-cry. The green lights of the cyborg's prosthesis permanently snuffed out, his murderer glides silently towards her, shotgun in hand. Around her, the bodies of her colleagues are splayed out, their glazed eyes all staring her way in silent accusation. The inevitable grabs hold, and she makes silent peace with her death as he pulls the trigger._

* * *

Then, she woke up and realized she was still alive _._

She flicked on the lights in her kitchen, pushed past the growing mountain of Chinese takeout on the table, and pulled her phone out of her pocket to check her multiple missed calls, she knew that her long list of missed calls had a multitude of names, chief among them being most of the same people who had been there that night in Versailles; Lena, Fareeha, Genji, Winston. She dismissed the voicemails without listening to them, almost entirely certain what the members of a reunion that had quickly gone stale wanted to say.

She set her phone onto the counter next to a ceramic bowl that held her house keys and continued on into the den, but as she entered she began to feel something... off. Normally, her house was bathed in light through the floor-to-ceiling windows, especially during this time of day. While she could see the sun was still glowing in the sky above, it felt like none of the light was reaching her, as though a storm cloud had dropped an ominous darkness over her house and hers alone.

Thinking nothing of it, so she headed for the stairs that led towards a long, hot shower that would go a long way to de-stressing. Before she could set off for her well-deserved treat though, her eyes caught one last thing left laying around in her clutter. On the coffee table in between the two sofas she had sitting facing each other sat a tiny shard of metal, no more than six inches long and barely two wide, the last remnants of her Cadeuceus Staff after it had been blown to smithereens in that horrible disaster at Versailles. She had placed it there for a very specific reason, one that played in her mind every time she looked at it every single day.

 _Overwatch was shut down for a reason. Maybe it's best it stay that way._

It was why she'd started working sixteen hour shifts at her clinic the day she had been able to stand up from her deathbed, and why she'd almost entirely severed ties with the family that had raised her. The old ways had failed, so she had to do something new, something more comfortable and more in tune with her views. Her clinic was now her reason for life, her resolution that she could make things work her way.

The swell of guilt and frustration she felt whenever she looked at that piece of her past subsided as she made her way up the stairs to the shower. Thirty minutes later, she was putting her hair back in its usual ponytail after drying it out and changing into a pair of sweatpants and a favourite t-shirt when suddenly, she felt a cold draft fly into her bedroom and envelop her, sucking away the warmth of the shower in an instant.

 _A draft_ , she thought. _In a city in Iraq?_ Finishing up her ponytail, she stepped out of her room and peered down the stairs into the common room. Nothing seemed out of order; The air conditioning was operating just fine, the windows and doors were shut and locked, the coffee table was clear of anythin-

The shard of the staff was gone. In the brief time it had been out of her sight it had vanished. She hadn't touched it at all that day, so there had to only one possible answer, and it deeply disturbed her.

She crept down the stairs, exceptionally careful not to let her steps be heard on the hard wood floor and her eyes on a swivel for whoever had violated the privacy of her home. As quickly and quietly as she was possibly able to, she headed for the kitchen and reached for her phone. However, just as she was about to dial the police, she felt cold metal press up against her head and the clicking sound of a gun being readied to fire.

"You'll want to put that down." a raspy voice stated from directly behind.

The hairs on Angela's neck stood on end and a chill ran down her spine. Now she knew why her house had been so dark and why that icy draft had twisted through. At a glacial pace, she placed the phone back on the counter and turned around, her heart now racing in surprise and fear.

Reaper now stood before her like a revenant, a semi-automatic shotgun in one hand and the staff shard in the other.


	2. Chapter 2: Three Things

Seeing Angela's eyes widen to the size of oranges and her skin turn deathly pale was a sight Reaper greatly enjoyed. He took a moment to savour his victory, to drink in the knowledge that one of the top names on his list was finally going to be crossed off, and that he was going to be able to do it in exactly the way he wanted to, with no interruptions and no foul-ups like at Versailles.

"Hands up in front, where I can see them." he demanded. Slowly, she complied, raising the arm by her side in the air before doing the same with the one that she had folded behind her back.

With his target at his mercy, now was the time for him to finish what he'd wanted to do for so long. He chuckled as he regarded the sliver of metal. "It still hurts, doesn't it?"

Angela was confused. "What do you mean?"

"I think you know." he growled in response, looking first at the shard, then at her stomach where he knew that the hook had left a small scar. "No matter how much time or how many miles you put behind you, the past always catches up, and old wounds always linger, waiting for when you think you've forgotten about them."

Angela's face hardened, believing she knew where he was going. "The injury hasn't hurt for months. I often, in fact, do forget it's even there."

"I wasn't referring to Versailles." Reaper smirked. "Not exclusively. There's some much older red in your ledger than that."

Taking in the deepest breath she could and mustering all the courage she had with a gun pointed at her skull, Angela interrupted her assassin before he could continue his monologue. "Why are you here?"

Reaper scoffed. "Don't play stupid with me."

"If you wanted to kill me Gabriel, you would have done so already."

Her answer caught Reaper off guard, and he paused for just a second to comprehend it before bursting into a sick cackle.

"You really think I'm that one-dimensional?" he hissed. "Make no mistake; I'm going to kill you, but first I've got two other things that I've wanted to do for a very, _very_ long time."

Purposefully leaving his intentions open as so to stew fear into her heart, he looked around at her kitchen. "Nice place." he commented with false admiration as his gaze fell on the stack of Chinese food. "Very... lived in." The pitch-dark, eyeless holes behind his ghost-white mask then fixed back on their target. "Mind if you show me the den?"

With the swift tilting of his head, he gestured for Angela to walk ahead of him, which she did as Reaper pressed his shotgun against her neck, causing her to recoil slightly. If her heart hadn't been racing before, it was in full tilt now, fueled by the shot of adrenaline that so often comes with life-or-death situations and accompanied by the terror of whatever warped fantasies of her death that the monster holding her at gunpoint had in store. She raised a hand to wipe beads of sweat off her brow, which prompted him to push the barrel further and her to recoil even more, her shoulders stiffening reflexively.

Reaper motioned for her to sit down as he drew the blinds on the windows shut before rounding her to sit on the sofa across from her, the dull thud of his boots ringing menacingly in her ears. He placed the piece of the Cadeuceus Staff back on the coffee table between them while still keeping her in front of his weapon.

"I have a gift for you." he whispered menacingly. Angela could only squirm in her seat as Reaper reached into a pocket under his hooded coat and produced a vial of obsidian-coloured fluid that he dropped onto the glass of the table with a loud clang. "Take it."

Angela, though, was petrified; _What sick game is he playing with this?_ The question nagged in her mind and delayed her actions until Reaper repeated his command, this time much more forcefully. Holding out her hand as though it was about to be chopped off, she slowly grasped the bottle and held it up, studying it reluctantly.

"Open it." he ordered.

Squinting her eyes and tilting her head away, Angela unscrewed the cap on the vial, but rather than whatever terrifying ideas had invaded her thoughts and fears, all she heard was a faint, breathy sound like a perpetual exhale. She looked back at it hesitantly to find that the liquid inside was vapourising into thick wisps of mist.

It took her a moment to regard the substance, but she realized something critical about it when she looked up after snapping the top closed and saw that Reaper was holding out his open hand, watching as it dissolved into the same puffs that were coming from the vial.

"What... what happened to you?" she asked through a tightened chest that made it hard to breathe.

"You tell me, doc." He paused to let his accusation sink in before continuing. "It's a compound designated magnesium bioxide triethylamine-24, but more simply known as 'Ghost Serum'. Created by a mutual friend, it's an equal parts blend of cutting-edge genetic therapy, chemical enhancements used by American spec ops forty years ago, and a _nanobiotic stimulant_ just to add a extra little kick."

Angela's blood turned to ice; Ana's usage of nanobiotics had always been a sore spot, but at least it still did some modicum of good. Adrenaline rushed into her veins to get the blood pumping again and a sense of rage grew within. How _dare_ Moira have stolen her invention, much less have used it to create this death-worshiping demon that sat across from her!

Reaper wasn't done though as his tone became even more boastful; The worst was yet to come. "In small doses, Ghost Serum can give you a healing factor and even limited invulnerability. Intake even so much as that vial there," he said as he picked up a television remote from off the table and turned on the screen next to the sofas. "and it kills. Irreversibly."

Angela briefly worried over just what the reason for turning on the TV was, but what she saw answered them immediately.

It was a hundred times worse than any nightmare.

News teams had swarmed the clinic like a colony of ants, crawling over every single last inch and capturing every excruciating detail. Inside, the camera drones buzzed around the care wards, filming the grim spectacle within that Angela watched with a quivering lip; Every single person and Omnic that occupied a bed, a wheelchair, stretcher, or gurney was nothing more than a slumped-over corpse rapidly disintegrating into thin black lines that floated away in the air. The devices that projected the once lifesaving nanobiotics onto the patients or injected it through IV tubes, allowing them to recover in record time, now sprayed the Ghost Serum and its lethal effects.

Angela's breathing stopped cold and her eyes locked into a traumatized stare as reporters covered the scene.

" _The Johann and Elin Ziegler Clinic and Care Center has become the sight of an unspeakable tragedy today, as all four hundred and thirty six of its current patients were suddenly found dead and decaying-_ "

" _The lead nurse of the non-profit venture, Jessica 7-1B, made a chilling call to EMTs less than an hour ago, saying that they nor any of the other staff had any idea what was happening or how to reverse the effects."_

 _"Dr. Angela Ziegler, the clinic's founder, owner, and head doctor, was nowhere to be found for comment-"_

 _"While police have thus far denied access to the parts of the clinic where Dr. Ziegler's groundbreaking medical technologies are located, our sources have been able to learn that the devices were apparently tampered with by someone who had inside access-"_

Unable to take any more, Angela desperately tried to peel herself away from the horror, but she found she had frozen stiff, stationary as a stone monolith. When her breathing was forced to renew itself, it manifested as growing hyperventilation until the shock fell away and left her broken down, holding her head in her hand and sobbing uncontrollably while Reaper watched motionless.

"Why?"

Reaper perked up upon hearing her muffled words. "Have something to say?"

"WHY?!" Angela screamed through her tears. "Why would you hurt so many innocent people to get to me?!"

This was exactly what Reaper had been waiting for the whole time. "First, tell me something: Do you know what day it is?"

Still crying, Angela looked incredulously. "What does that have to do with-"

"It has everything to do with this!" he snapped viciously. "You know as well as I do what happened exactly eight years ago today, something all too similar to what happened just now."

A lightbulb went off in Angela's head. _Mein Gott_ , _it is._

Reaper saw the look on her face that showed she had caught on and pounced. "That's it. You remember; Geneva had just fallen, and what was left of Overwatch was at the first hearing. You and me though, we were somewhere a little different, now weren't we?"

He hunched over and, grabbing onto a lock of Angela's hair, forced her to look him in the black voids where his eyes were. "You'd managed to dig me out of the rubble and drag me over to a makeshift triage station. I thought I was already gone; I could see myself literally fading away, and the pain, the _agony_ , that Jack had put me in was unbearable, but I wasn't ready to die." He pulled her closer still, to the point where she could see the mist coalescing in his soulless eyes behind his mask. "When you put me on that table and readied your machine I did something I've never done before or since. Do you remember what that was?"

Angela shut her eyes tightly, praying desperately for this all to be just some kind of awful nightmare, but that fleeting notion was shattered when he forced his shotgun against her temple.

"Do. You. Remember?!"

"Y-you... begged me." she managed to say between tearful heaves.

"And what did I beg you?"

"To... help you."

Reaper now wrenched the lock of hair in his fist, making Angela wince in pain. "But no," he seethed. "instead of honouring the wish of a dying man, you went over to your machine, you flipped your switch, and you let me writhe and scream until there was _nothing_ left of me! Nothing," he whispered as he relinquished his grip and let his hand dissipate again. "but this."

"I tried, Gabriel. I really did, and I... I'm sorry-"

"I DON'T CARE!" he yelled. "You could have done something, _anything_ , other than just standing around and watching as you killed me!" He sat back in the sofa, still hunched over as he let his head drop and growled in utter fury. "It took me eight months to defy all the odds and take form again. EIGHT. MONTHS, and every day, every step I took after that was barely enough to keep myself from falling into oblivion again."

Though it was invisible under the spectral mask he wore, his tone sounded like it was coming from a twisted, hateful smile. "So to answer your question, that's why they had to die. You didn't just kill me that day; You destroyed me. You took everything I ever was, that I ever had, and let it burn to a crisp. On the day I was finally able to come back from the abyss, I swore that I would make you pay, and let you know exactly how I felt."

An invigorating chill ran down Reaper's spine as he reveled in his triumph. "In case you missed it, that's the first thing." he gloated. "Now do you understand what I meant?"

Angela wiped away the stream of tears from her sky-blue eyes and took in a deep breath to hold back her emotions, just long enough to say what she had to. "Yes. I do. And now that you've made me pay... let me fix you."

Reaper was again caught off guard. He sat motionless as her words sank in. His mask made whatever face was under their unreadable, but the surprise was obvious.

Angela stifled her crying again and forced herself to take in enough air to be able to speak. "You are evil incarnate, Gabriel." she said in a whispered vibrato. "You are a wretched, irredeemable, malignant cancer on the face of the Earth, and I hate you with all my heart. But that doesn't mean that I can't show mercy."

She stared into him with every piece of compassion she had left. "The reason why..." she said slowly, stemming the relentless urge to sob and scream and whatever else happened to come with it. "the reason why I couldn't save you then was because I didn't know about this, this 'Ghost Serum'. No one deserves to suffer like you did then. I am truly sorry, and I've paid a far greater price than I can afford for my mistake."

Reaper observed and listened with great intent as Angela continued. "If you let me, I can study you and the compound and maybe, I can find a cure. I have no love for Overwatch; They'd never have to know. I just want to make you whole again. Please," she begged. "let me help you."

Silence fell over the two of them for nearly a minute. Neither one of them moved so much as an inch: Angela for fear of being gunned down, and Reaper for reasons he was going to make known.

He cocked his head slightly to one side and smirked. That smirk slowly grew into a snicker, then a chuckle, and into full-blown, hearty laughter while Angela tried in vain to understand just what he was getting at.

As abruptly as the laughter begin, it ended. "You're unbearably naive." he snarled. "Six years ago I may have taken you up on that offer, but around then I realized something; I didn't just want a few people dead, like you or Jack or Jesse, no. I wanted _all_ of Overwatch. At the same time I also realized that what I'd been given was the ultimate blessing in disguise; After all, not even the most well-trained and enhanced operatives in the world can kill what's already dead."

He stood up and floated over to Angela on his mist, looking down upon the appalled expression that spread like wildfire across her face. "And that brings me to the second thing." Once again he grabbed her hair and dragged her closer so that they were eye to eye. "Thank you. Thank you for creating me," he said in a breathy whisper before dropping her and watching as she collapsed onto the floor, in tears yet again. "and thank you for giving me the power to carve a path through the remnants of Overwatch and anyone else who stands in my way."

Angela propped herself up on her elbows and glared back at the despicable monster with unmitigated rage. "Fuck you!" she spat.

As he cackled again, she rose to her feet and took a swing at him with all her vitriol, but he sidestepped effortlessly and slapped her hard across the face, sending her down onto the coffee table and shattering it into tiny fragments. As she ran a finger along her face where Reaper had hit her and felt a line of blood from her cheek to her nose where the talons on his gauntlet had swiped, he came out of the cloud and planted his foot on her back.

"Don't worry. It'll be over soon." he remarked sadistically. "You just got ahead of yourself earlier, that's all." He stomped down harder as she squirmed like a fish on a line and he drew his shotgun to deliver a final, decisive blow.

But instead, an interruption came.

Just as he was about to pull the trigger, a heavy knock came on the door, followed by a police officer shouting in Arabic through a bullhorn that this was the only warning they were going to give before they broke down the door.

Reaper was dumbfounded. His open hand closed into a fist so tight it shook. He'd done everything right; Angela was all alone, the blinds were drawn, and he'd seen her put down the pho-

That was it, he remembered. Just as he'd told her to put her hands up, she'd had one behind her back. The _one_ thing that he had missed was now threatening to take this moment from him.

In no time at all, he dissipated into a black cloud and shot back out to the kitchen to confirm his theory, which to his dismay was correct; Not only was the phone on the emergency line and had certainly been so the entire time, but a keychain with a police car icon was flashing faintly. Simultaneously, a battering ram made impact with the front door, nearly caving it in with the first blow.

Taking both in his grip, he crushed them with seething rage. Like Versailles before, now was the time to cut losses, but in the split second it took for him to tear back into the den, reform, and draw his shotgun again, she had disappeared, leaving only a trail of blood from her face in her wake.

Reaper smirked upon seeing this. _Maybe I can still enjoy this_ , he mused. He was just about to take off in pursuit like a hound on the trail of a fox when the front door gave way to the battering ram. Six men in paramilitary gear armed with assault rifles stormed in, but they were all dropped dead in seconds when Reaper whirled around, drew a second shotgun, and let loose a flurry of bullets their way before dissolving and charging out the door.

* * *

Angela ran for her life, the desperate instinct to survive pushing everything else aside. She felt a trickle of blood streaming down her cheek and immediately covered it. The pain, the anger, the sorrow she had felt seconds earlier was all forgotten for now. For now, there was something inside of her screaming for her to live at all costs; Nothing else mattered at that point. She dove down a nearby alley and crouched behind a dumpster, not a moment too soon as a chill whipped through the dry air, letting her know that her pursuer had already caught up.

She cupped a hand over her mouth to dampen the sound of her parched breathing from the dry air and another over her heart, now thumping so vigourously it hurt her sternum. Sweat collected on the furrows of her brow before sliding down into her eyes and onto her cut, irritating them both. Over it all, she could hear each footstep as Reaper closed in on his prey, a fresh pair of shotguns in hand. For a fleeting moment, though, Angela felt the possibility, however small, that she would indeed survive; With the blood trail left cold, her mind calming to a degree rational enough to know to not move a muscle or make an inkling of sound, and in what was a long, shadowy alleyway marked by several hiding spots, it was possible. Not likely, but possible, and she clung to that last hope as though it were dangling off a cliff overlooking a great ravine.

It all gave way when a tin can clattered on the pavement.

The impact of his steps stopped in an instant, while Angela's heart leaped into her throat. He had to have heard that, and it came from directly behind her. Had she moved, she thought? Was there something that she had clipped as she took cover? As quickly and quietly as she dared, she looked around for where the noise had come from, but found nothing.

 _It doesn't matter now_ , her thoughts concluded. _I'm going to die_.

The hope that she had clung went into a bottomless freefall, completely out of reach. The hush that blanketed the dark alley, one that she knew existed for this long because Reaper was now gliding forth to make his attack lethally silent, emphasized how loud she heard her heartbeat; If the can hadn't sealed her fate, the thumping from inside her chest would for sure.

The shadow of his figure crossed over those of dumpsters and trash bins as he drew closer and closer, second by agonizing second. If she had her Valkyrie suit she'd be able to fly off out of his reach, she thought. If she had her pistol she'd be able to fight back, however futile it may have been. In what she perceived to be her final thoughts as the chill got ever more frigid, all she could think of was regrets. The destruction of peace at Versailles, the hateful chaos that had caused so much pain, the countless failures and the weights they burdened her with, dragging her down into the same chasm that her hope had been cast into.

Outside her hiding spot, Reaper stopped just short of where the sound had originated and touched back down onto his feet. He knew she'd hear it, but that was the point; She'd been beaten, and there was absolutely no way she could ever possibly escape.

She closed her eyes and readied herself for the blackness of death, her expression going from fearful to blank and almost peaceful. He, with the lightning speed of a predator, rounded the corner and emptied his weapons.

The stray cat that had knocked the tin can out of a trash bin, on the exact other side of the dumpster from Angela, never stood a chance.

Another long silence followed. At first Angela wasn't sure what to think of it, until she realized that she was still thinking in the first place. Somehow, she was still alive, and she had no idea why. She opened her eyes and flicked them around, but where Reaper should have been standing, guns drawn and ready to follow up her death with a grim quip and a raspy chuckle, he wasn't. She briefly pondered getting up from her spot and looking to see where he was, but her question was answered by a rage-filled scream that pierced her eardrums before echoing off as Reaper, who was no more than five feet behind her, shot up towards the sky and into the distance in a dark cloud.

* * *

Her movements as she got up and walked back home were glacially slow. Night had fallen by the time she reached her house and was escorted in by the army of police surrounding it. Several of them offered her blankets and tried to direct her to a waiting trauma counselor, but she dismissed them all with a silent wave before doing the same to the officers who had turned the interior into a crime scene. Having collected everything they could, they all filed out the front, leaving behind a cheap but sturdy covering for her broken door and a cruiser outside as a guard.

The house was now deathly quiet, far more so than Angela was used to, and even though nights in Oasis were almost as hot as the days, she couldn't help but notice how cold she still felt, and how tired she had suddenly become. She went to sit down on the sofas, but she stopped as two things caught her eye; The sliver from the staff and the vial of Ghost Serum, neither of which had given the police anything to work with. She picked the two up and studied them over, but was distracted by her open palms and the blood on them that now stained the items.

The tired feeling now threatened to overwhelm her, but before she went up to her bedroom, she went to the kitchen, placed the vial in a drawer next to where she kept her sidearm, and tossed the metal shard into a trash can. With her hands now open again as she proceeded upstairs, she ran her fingers across the cut on her face; It was deep, bled profusely, and hurt to the touch, telltale signs that even with closure strips and her technology, it was going to leave a scar.

At last she was finally able to make her way into her room and collapse onto her bed. With her last thoughts before she drifted off, she prayed to whatever was out there that would listen that the peaceful bliss of sleep could embrace her forever, never letting her face the morning sun and the cold, violent world again.

She spent the next day in bed crying her eyes out when she woke up from the nightmare and saw the blood still smeared on her hands, and how it had now contaminated her bed too.


	3. Chapter 3: Bridge Over Troubled Water

"Watch your right!"

Tracer reacted to Fareeha's command immediately and blinked off to a safe distance as a rocket was sent downrange, obliterating the Bastion tank that was closing in on the payload.

"Good call!" Tracer answered over her earpiece as Fareeha flew off to engage another target.

"That's three you owe me now. Did Winston's latest tweak slow you down?" Fareeha bantered back, referring to the chronal accelerator that both kept Tracer anchored in reality and her use of her abilities.

"Don't get cocky now, love." the peppy Brit answered. "Takes a bit to get warmed up, but I'll be running circles around you in no time."

As Fareeha lined up a shot on another enemy, a hit from an energy weapon glanced off her armour, unbalancing her in the air and, in the close quarters of King's Row, nearly sending her careening into a brick wall. Before the attacker could get off another shot though, Tracer sped in and perforated it with pulse bullets.

As Fareeha regained her balance, she looked down and saw Tracer with a cheeky grin on her face making a mocking salute. "Watch your right." she called up before zipping off to tally up more targets.

Under her helmet, Fareeha rolled her eyes and chuckled quietly. _Training missions just aren't the same without you_.

The two of them rushed to the payload as it trundled through the streets, working in unison to drive off the waves of Null Sector Omnics. As usual, Fareeha was top cover, calling out patterns and dealing with strays that were slipping the perimeter that Tracer had been keeping around the hovercart. Tracer herself was tearing across the cityscape at breakneck speed, effortlessly dodging everything the army of attackers was sending her way and leaving a trail of broken parts and singed chassis in her wake.

With the area cleared thanks to their joint efforts, the payload rumbled up to a solid steel blast door embedded in a great, castle-looking building and began to shake and whir violently, a glow forming from the center that grew brighter every second. Tracer and Fareeha both backed off a short distance outside of the cart's blast range.

"So what can we expect behind that door?" Faheera asked, having to shout over the noise.

"Back when it happened, the power plant was guarded by a load of Bastions and four OR-14s, and Winston's done a damn good job recreating it." Tracer replied. "The way we got in was with Reinhardt keeping their attention while Torbjorn and I went on the attack and Angela kept everyone patched up."

"Well Reinhardt was a no-show, so I guess we'll have to do this another way. When the door blows, I'll lay down cover fire and thin them out before we both go in and mop them up."

"How do you plan on doing that?"

By this point, the payload was on the verge of going off, cracks forming in its structure and the whirring having grown louder than ever.

Fareeha slung her rocket launcher over her shoulder and readied to take off, an ambitious smile forming under her helmet. "Just watch."

Unable to stay together any longer, the payload exploded in a spectacular flash of fire and metal, ripping a massive hole in the blast door and revealing dozens of Omnics on the other side. Just as Tracer had said, there were multiple Bastions in their turret mode accompanied by a quartet of OR-14s, all of them ready to cut down the first thing they saw.

The boosters on Fareeha's wings roared to life, sending her soaring up into the air and through the gape at high speed before she came to a sudden stop midair. Before the Omnics could react, several panels on her armour's shoulders, chest, and legs pulled back into themselves to reveal bundles of missile launchers.

" _Justice reigns from a-!_ "

Before she could finish her battle cry and let loose her firepower, the holographic recreation of the war zone of King's Row nine years ago faded away, and the training drones that had so faithfully imitated the enemies of that event wound down to a halt.

The two Overwatch members were now standing inside the stark, checkerboard-patterned confines of Watchpoint: Gibraltar's holographic training room, a high-tech tool that Winston had been inspired to build in the last few years of the Golden Age after watching a marathon of episodes from his favourite science fiction television series. Up in a high corner overlooking the area was a command center where various scenarios could be called up and played out; The Uprising of King's Row was one example, but multiple others over the years had been added, with such locations as the Greek island of Ilios, the Shambali Monastery in Nepal, a Hollywood film set, an ancient temple in Thailand, and even a recreation of the story Reinhardt told every Halloween being at the beck and call of its users.

"Oi, we were just about to beat the final segment! What gives?" Tracer called up to the command center.

"I'm sorry, but the two of you have a visitor. Master Shimada has been waiting to talk to you since the anti-aircraft cannon phase." Athena, the Watchpoint's A.I. program, replied over the PA system.

"Well why didn't you call us up sooner?"

"I concluded that you would be more irate than you are now. I seem to recall the two of you being stuck on that section for several minutes."

This prompted a long laugh from the two women in the room. "That's some pretty funny logic, love. We weren't close to the end then." Tracer remarked playfully.

"It's not any funnier than than the logic of time travel."

"That's enough, both of you." Faheera cut in through a chuckle. "Just save our progress so we can pick up where we were once we get back."

"I already have." Athena reassured as the door slid open and the two agents walked out.

As the door shut behind them, Fareeha removed her helmet and Tracer her goggles, both to find Genji sitting patiently but mildly bored on a bench, a scene that prompted a snicker from the two women.

"Ah! Fareeha, Lena, it's been a while." Genji said warmly as he stood up and walked over to the two of them. He first extended a handshake to the former, then to the latter, but Tracer instead pulled him in for a hug.

"Good to see you too." Fareeha replied.

"You keeping warm up in Nepal? I hear it gets pretty cold up there and Emily just taught me how to knit. I could whip you up a scarf in no time!" Tracer chimed in.

"Your offer is generous, but I am fine." Genji's voice suddenly turned solemn and though his eyes were hidden under the green slit in his faceplate, the two women knew that he looked like he sounded. "There is an important reason why I wanted to speak with you. It's about Dr. Ziegler."

A wave of concern swept over Tracer and Fareeha; More than most they'd known how Angela had been faring as of recent. To the former, she had been a mentor, a confidant, and a guardian ever since the actual Uprising mission. For the latter, 'Aunt Angie' had been part of the extended Overwatch family, a tender, nurturing soul that could always be turned to for help.

"What is it? Is there something wrong?" Fareeha asked.

Genji took in a long breath, trying to find the right words to convey his message and the courage to get it across. "As you know," he said quietly. "last week Dr. Ziegler survived an attempt on her life by Reaper."

"I remember that." Tracer replied. "Winston and I called her up to see if she was alright. She didn't answer him, but she said to me that she was."

"Yes, but while physically she is sound, I fear that he has done something far worse to her." Again he paused, inhaling deeply. "Somehow, he's done the unthinkable. Gabriel Reyes has struck down everyone in her clinic."

The colour drained from Fareeha's face and Tracer's eyes became became the size of oranges. The former raised a hand to cover her gaping mouth while the latter staggered over to the bench and sank into it before the shock caused her to lose balance.

The room was completely silent for what seemed like an eternity, everyone there struggling to make some kind of sense from this horrific news.

Tracer was the first to speak again, but words to describe what she was feeling were scarce. "I... I don't-I mean...HOW?!" she exclaimed.

"That clinic... that was her life's work, wasn't it?" Fareeha added. "This... this can't be true. Where did you learn this?"

"From me." Athena chimed in. At the same time, a TV screen embedded into the wall nearby flicked on, showing the footage of the massacre in all its grim truth. "I concluded that it would be received best from him."

Tracer put on a light smirk. "That's some pretty funny logic, love." she replied.

"I've already informed the rest of the team. They are currently in the process of sending their condolences, but Ms. Ziegler doesn't seem to have answered any of them except for Winston."

"What did she say?" Fareeha inquired.

"I'm afraid her exact words exceed the level of obscenity in my usable vocabulary, but in essence she told him to never contact her again." the AI responded before switching off the screen, the appalling sight on it fading to black.

Tracer, by this point, had taken in the initial shock and was able to stand back on her own two feet. "When was that?"

"Yesterday." Genji answered.

"That's not good." Fareeha said, a sudden urgency taking control of her words. "Has anyone seen her at the clinic?"

"Records indicate she has resigned from the clinic two days after the tragedy." Athena said.

Fareeha's tone was again urgent, but now it took on a commanding resonance. "If no one's seen her then and she's not taking calls, we need to get over there. Now."

"I was just thinking that too." Tracer replied. "I'll even call up the Lindholms, see if we can stop by and bring along one of Ingrid's apple pies; Those always seemed to cheer her up."

"I like your thinking. I'll get changed out of this suit-"

"I'll call Ingrid and get the ship warmed up-"

"And we'll meet in fifteen." With that, the two women resolutely sped off, leaving Genji on his own.

The cyborg ninja snickered under his faceplate; The two of them had always been Angela's closest friends and never ones to let anyone feel alone. Traits, he surmised, that they had learnt from his angel.

Unfurling his hand, he stared down at a gold locket that he had had with him the entire time. Looking back upon it stirred up old memories of a dark time for him, where, as his master Zenyatta had put it, his soul had been in discord.

As he opened the locket, a pair of angel wings, pearl-white and glistening in even the relatively dim light of the room. Tucked into the top of the locket was a portrait of Angela as he had seen her from when she had first reached his broken, dying body in Shimada Castle; A radiant, heavenly being, her hair and wings a golden glow and her soft, caring expression a beacon of hope even in the blackest of nights.

With the locket open, a tune recorded into it began to play, a delicate voice singing over a soft piano. The words sent a chill down Genji's spine and brought tears to his eyes every time he heard it:

 **When you're weary, feeling small**

 **When tears are in your eyes, I'll dry them all**

 **I'm on your side, oh, when times get rough**

 **And friends just can't be found**

 **Like a bridge over troubled water**

 **I will lay me down**

 **Like a bridge over troubled water**

 **I will lay me down**

The locket had been a gift, the last of the innumerable ones that the angel had given him before he'd struck out on his own. He hadn't thought much of it then, but as his journey helped him to find peace, her actions were brought into retrospective. In a time where he'd shut out everyone else and where all anyone had seen of him was his barren, metallic frame over a crippled organic inside, she had always been there for him, a bridge over troubled water as the locket had put it. She had seen the good man still inside and always treated him with compassion, care, love...

 _You have done me a service that I cannot thank you enough for, angel_ , he thought as he gently closed the locket. _I am in your debt, and though I can never repay you, I will show you just how much you mean to me. I swear it upon my life._


	4. Chapter 4: Mistakes

When the three of them reached Angela's house, they approached the door without a clue of what to expect.

Just as they made their way to her doorstep, something just felt off. The trio seemed to silently agree that it was the eerie combination of the blinds being closed, the tire marks on the front lawn, the out-of-place white of the door when compared to the colouration of the rest of the house, and the heavy, dark bank of clouds rolling in from the east at a pace that meant the storm it brought would be upon them within the hour.

They each exchanged concerned looks and silent doubts; Nothing here indicated anything good. Best case scenario was that Angela was in a state of post-traumatic stress, while the worst had implications that none of them could bear to dwell on.

Thankfully, Angela was able to answer the door.

She met them, though, as a shadow of her former self, an empty shell that betrayed none of the life that had once inhabited it. Her hair was greasy, long platinum blonde locks falling every which way. Her eyes were bloodshot and lined with heavy bags, and behind them laid a deep despair. Her breath smelled strongly of something freshly smoked mixed with alcohol, and the scar that ran across her cheek looked red and irritated.

"Can I help you?" she asked. Though she tried to hide it, her voice sounded as though every word was a chore that exhausted her.

"We just wanted to stop by for a visit, love." Tracer answered warmly. "We even brought something for you." she added, to which Genji held up a fresh-baked apple pie. "Ingrid made it just for you."

Angela fought back the urge to tell them to leave and never come back. "That's very kind of you," she said monotonously. "but I'm not hungry."

"That's OK." The smile on Tracer's face contrasted greatly with Angela's dour demeanor. "May we come in, just for a spell?"

She wanted them to just turn around and go, to leave her by her lonesome and just let her curl up and stay dead to the world, but it seemed pointless. Without a doubt they cared, but if only they showed it a different way. Still, Genji, her little sparrow, had shown up...

Angela turned back towards the inside, hiding her face from prying eyes. She wiped the weary pain from her eyes and forced herself to crack a smile to match theirs before facing them once again.

"Of course." she answered, mimicking Tracer's warmth.

As Tracer stepped inside and Angela followed, Genji discreetly pulled Fareeha aside with a light tug on her shirt.

"What are we going to do?" he whispered, determination colouring his voice.

Fareeha's answer was simple. "Whatever we can."

"I do not know what you mean."

"It means that this has to be handled delicately. Lena and I will play it by ear and work with what we can. Just follow our lead." she stated before stepping in through the door.

Genji sighed frustratedly. Under his faceplate his brow furrowed. All of this seemed too _passive_ , too uncaring. Within his family a man's oath, especially to a woman, was his sacred word, and to let it be broken was a fate that made death feel preferable.

His aggravation only grew when he followed the three of them into the house, wading through the mountain of mail at the landing, sidestepping the takeout boxes in the kitchen as he set the baked gift down, and pushing aside empty bottles strewn across the floor of the den alongside tiny, edgeless glass nuggets. The thing that caught his attention most, though, was in a trash bin. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the glint of the last shard of the Caduceus Staff, discarded and left to be forgotten, in the sunlight.

 _Angela_ , he thought as he picked the piece up and kept it in his hand. _How could you have fallen so far?_

With Tracer's gentle hand on her shoulder, Angela took a seat on a sofa, swatting aside a bottle and picking another up for a sip that turned into downing half all at once. Fareeha settled into the sofa across from her fallen friend while Genji leaned against the entrance, his fingers lightly tapping on his hip.

"Anything we can do to make you feel more comfortable, get you something perhaps?" Tracer inquired, her tone tender and light-footed.

Angela's response was fast and reflective. "I'm fine. Thank you, but I'm fine."

Genji muttered under his breath when no one said anything for some time. _If this is 'playing it by ear'_ , _you must be deaf_.

Fareeha leaned in and spoke softly. "I should have said this sooner, but I'm sorry. About everything. We all are."

"Thanks. That... that means a lot." Angela replied. She had done her best to keep up a positive demeanor, but Genji could tell she was restraining emotions.

"I like the house. Did you decorate it yourself?" Fareeha asked.

In subtle response, Angela and Genji's eyes alike focused on what was left of the coffee table and the various items on the floor as another long silence fell. Tracer and Fareeha both noticed this and, after exchanging a worried look, decided to try another approach.

"We know it's been hard," the former said. "but we're all here for you, just like all the times you were there for us. I don't think I'd have made it out of the Uprising alive if it wasn't for you, and Fareeha told me that she doesn't think Ana would have survived Paraguay without you." she said through a chuckle, placed so in the hopes of being contagious.

Again, Angela mimicked her friend's expression, again she did so to suppress a swell of emotion, and again Genji saw right through her, which put him further on edge.

The cyborg ninja clenched his grasp on the shard tighter until he could feel the edge scraping across his metal palm. Every second that he saw the doctor sinking into this sorry, depressive state was a second too long. This had once been the same woman who had helped him walk again after his body had been torn to shreds, the same soft-faced and tender-hearted woman who had found a good man trapped underneath cold steel.

The same angel who had floated down from the heavens and restored the fallen sparrow to flight...

 _This is intolerable. We have made no progress by 'following your lead'._

He was just about ready to intervene and get the matter solved, but one piece of his conscience was still left to play Devil's Advocate, telling him to give his friends another chance. He took in a deep breath and crossed an arm over his chest to physically hold himself back.

"If there's anything we can do for you, literally anything, just tell us." Fareeha assured.

For the first time since they had sat down, Angela sat up from her slouch. Like before, her response seemed reflexive. "No. No, I'm fine. I just... need time."

The longest silence of the day permeated through the room. Though everyone remained utterly silent, their feelings were clear; Angela continued to look down at her feet, trying to forget that they were here. Genji remained fixated on the doctor, his next move dependent on what came next. Tracer and Fareeha exchanged glances again, reassuring each other that there was still something that could be done.

Tracer was the first to break the silence. "Well, maybe we can stay for a while? Make time go faster?"

Before anyone could say anything else, Genji strode directly over to Angela and crouched down inches in front of her, looking her directly in the eyes. His breaking point had finally come, and now it was time to do things his way.

"Angela, you need to snap out of it; This isn't you!" he asserted. "As much as you may say otherwise, you are not fine, and we both know that time does not heal all wounds."

Tracer and Fareeha were left speechless, watching in growing bewilderment.

"The Dr. Ziegler I know would be back on her feet and taking action again by now, but instead you're sitting here, wallowing in your own misery!"

"What are you doing?!" Tracer whispered angrily, but the cyborg continued.

"What happened to you was a tragedy, but you're acting helpless by shutting everyone out! Reyes made you think it's your fault, but you are not to blame. Please," he pleaded, opening his hand and offering her the last shard of the staff. "Let me help you. Let me because... because I need you. Come with us back to Gibraltar. Don't let yourself or your soul be the next ones to die because of Reyes' evil."

The emotions that she had stifled now threatened to consume her entirely. She stared first at the shard she had thrown away, then at Genji's shiny metal mask and emerald visor, as dumbfounded as the other two women in the room.

She shut her eyes tightly to curb the tears for just a bit longer as she closed his open palm. "Genji," she said, her voice a whispered, contempt-filled vibrato. "it's time for you to leave."

"I will not leave without you." he replied resolutely. "I cannot-"

"Yes you can." Fareeha interrupted as she forcibly grabbed Genji by the arm and dragged him away. "We're leaving. _Now_."

It took both her and Tracer's combined strength to restrain the ninja and haul him out the door into the rainstorm that had arrived by then. As they did, he looked at his angel one last time, silently imploring her again to come with them.

What he saw in her eyes just before the door closed was a crushed heart and broken spirit, pain running rampant on her mind and soul.

* * *

As the door slammed shut, Fareeha whirled him around and pinned him against the wall so that they were face to face.

"I have exactly one question for you, and I expect exactly one answer." she demanded, the lightning that was flashing overhead seen in her eyes as well. "What the hell were you thinking?!"

Genji reflected her expression and tone. "You said we were going to do whatever we could. Either you're a liar or you have no idea what you were doing."

"I could say the same thing about you. Your actions were completely inexcusable-"

"And yours weren't?!" he shouted as he threw Fareeha's hand off. "Every approach you took stopped at the first obstacle you encountered. You were shut down without even trying!"

"And what, you think I'm _happy_ about that? You think I'm _fine_ with seeing Aunt Angie so depressed?!"

The two glared each other down, almost literally at each other's throats and faces with a slight glisten from the raindrops that slid down them. "Apparently, given that that fire in your spirit was not around when we needed it." Genji seethed.

Before the two could come to blows, Tracer blinked in between them and held them back. "Quit it, both of you! We're not going to get anywhere like this." She gestured for Fareeha to back off coupled with a look that told her in no uncertain terms not to interrupt, to which Fareeha silently and begrudgingly obliged.

Tracer then turned to the cyborg. "Genji, love," she said softly. "Maybe you're right that we were being too passive, but maybe Fareeha's right too."

"That is not what I expected you of all people to say." Genji spat.

"Just... hear me out." She inhaled, swept aside her drenched hair, and closed her eyes for a short period, collecting her thoughts so she could best move forward.

"We know you care a lot about Angela," she said calmly. "and we are so happy that you want to help so badly. But the thing is, there's a certain way that you have to go about this. For example, maybe you didn't have to tell her to 'snap out of it' or that she wasn't fine when she said she was?"

Genji was unchanged. "Dr. Ziegler never let me fall into sorrow like she has now. Even when I refused her help, she still offered it!"

"That's just it." she pointed out. "She offered to help you, but she didn't force it, and that's kind of the key thing here. It's fantastic that you're trying so hard to care for Angela, but you can't help her through this unless she says you can."

A long silence, only broken by the rumbling of thunder and the pattering of rain on their faces, followed before Tracer brought up her next point. "Remember that locket she gave you? That song that plays when it opens?"

Genji reached for the item in question and held it up for her to see. "Yes, what about it?"

"That's just it. She told me she gave it to you because she wanted to let you know she'd always be there for you. That's the kind of thing that works."

The rebuttal Genji wanted to give died on his lips when something clicked in his mind. He pulled out his locket and opened it, the wings sparkling in the rain while the lyrics touched home.

He shut the locket rapidly as the realization of his actions sprang forth. _What have I done?_

Under the green slit in his helmet, his eyes sank into dejection and he crouched against the wall as memories of the old days came back into light, times when his self-loathing and blinding desire for blood had pushed him down a path frequented by the likes of Reaper and Moira. No matter how much angst he put between himself and the rest of Overwatch, no matter how far he spiraled down, she had always been right behind him, offering a helping hand should he have wanted it.

"Now do you understand what we were doing?" Fareeha asked, still agitated.

"Yes," Genji answered quietly as he stood back up. "but I swore an oath on the life that Angela gave me that I would aid her through her troubles as she did for me, and to stop here would be not only to forfeit my honour, but to besmirch everything she means to me."

Tracer's eyes widened slightly and a realizing smile crossed her lips; This meant _much_ more to him than just helping a dear friend.

"What are you going to do?" Fareeha inquired.

Genji turned towards the sidewalk that led away from the dropship the trio had taken to Oasis, only stopping to answer the question before walking away with his head hung low in the pouring rain. "Whatever I can."

* * *

The moment the door had slammed shut, Angela completely broke down.

The whole affair had been the worst experience of her life. Everything had gone wrong, just like, it seemed, her attempts at making any positive change in the world. From Paraguay and Egypt to the Uprising and Versailles, her memories of her efforts had ended in failure, the cost of which was paid for in blood.

Worst of all, though, was that it had all happened alongside the same people who were trying to make it right. Winston had had the gall to try to apologize for breaking his promise that no one would die at Versailles, Tracer and Fareeha hadn't seemed to get the memo that she just wanted to be left alone, and Genji...

His was the straw that broke the camel's back: For eight years she had carried the weight of so many failures, of the Uprising's civilian casualties, of Paraguay's political upheaval, of Versailles' cold-blooded massacre, and how it had all been her fault.

The burden was overwhelming, and as such there was only one thing left to do.

With what strength she had left, she forced herself off the sofa and trudged slowly to the kitchen to do what she had wished would have happened a week ago. She opened the drawer where her sidearm was kept and wrapped her finger around the trigger; It felt cold to the touch, but inviting. The Caduceus Pistol had been kept at other's insistence, her former friends justifying that it'd be "just in case".

She stared down the short, stocky barrel of the energy weapon. _At least they were right about one thing_.

Angela pressed the barrel to her chin and readied to close her eyes. Her knees threatened to buckle, so she steadied herself with a hand on the open drawer. She was just about to pull the trigger when something slipped out from under her grip, throwing her off balance. Looking down, she saw the blood-covered vial of Ghost Serum, the essence of Reaper himself that was created with her tech, that had been lying in its place for the past week.

It should have been the last thing she ever saw, the final testament to how she had been powerless to help anyone. And yet, something clicked in her head, something that directed her loathing outward rather than at herself.

 _Reyes made you think it's your fault, but you are not to blame._

The stinging sensation of tears on her scar grabbed her attention; It still hurt, still felt raw and exposed, and she knew it needed to be closed permanently.

It made perfect sense; The monster had played everyone for twenty years, conspired with the most dangerous beings on the planet, even poisoned Genji's mind when he was in Blackwatch, and had masterminded both Versailles and her clinic's attack.

Her finger relinquished its grip on the trigger as she let the pistol drop back into the drawer.

 _No_ , she resolved. _Not yet. Not while he's still alive_.

As she placed the vial in her pocket and dried her eyes, anger and irony crossing her thoughts simultaneously. A bolt of lightning seared through the sky, lighting the dark room through the slits in the blinds over the windows.

 _Gabriel said I gave him the ultimate blessing in disguise. Now, he's given me one in return_.


	5. Chapter 5: Long Time Running

Under the dead of night in the Egyptian desert, the Necropolis looked as eerie as the name suggested.

Angela touched down in the square that marked the centre of the ancient site, the shimmering, mechanical feathers of her Valkyrie suit retreating within the wings on her back. Before her, she was greeted by two immense obelisks, each carved with epic scenes from some story that had likely been lost to the same battering sands that swirled around the area and stripped the buildings of the colour they'd once had.

Though a spectacle to behold for certain, Angela brushed it aside as she walked into the midst of the great tombs that flanked her, each one standing like a towering sentinel over dimly-lit passageways into the ground. She was forced to watch her step when she nearly walked off the edge of the square into a chasm that went straight down into an impenetrable blackness. Again, however, she brushed it aside, going around the drop and towards the largest tomb overlooking the square.

 _I guess it's a good place for someone to be if they're supposed to be dead_ , she thought to herself. _On-the-nose, but good._

The closer she made it to the central tomb, the less the starry sky above her and the torches placed outside were able to penetrate the dark. Angela drew closer, not knowing just what it was she could expect. A chill ran through her as a wind whistled through the air. She was here because there was one specific person she was looking for, someone who she knew could and would help her with what she needed to do, and that person was down in the tunnels. By now she had reached the top of the steps that led into the central tomb, and looking down into it she saw it went down as far as the chasm, with the inky black of night just as thick.

She closed her eyes and took a series of deep breaths to steel herself and remove the feeling of the night's cold; Once she took the first step, there would be no turning back. _This is what I want_ , she assured herself. _This is how I get what I need_.

Before she could make the first step, a woman's voice, aged but gentle, spoke from across the square. "I wasn't expecting company."

Angela gasped and twirled around in place, looking over the area closely for where the voice came from. She knew who it was, but it had still come as a surprise for her to hear it; After all, it had been just under ten years.

From a ledge on an adjacent tomb, Angela saw a cloaked figure sling a sniper rifle over their shoulder and jump down to the ground, rising quickly but gingerly from the landing before walking into the starlight to reveal an elderly woman with silver hair and an eyepatch. "But it's always good," she said. "to see an old friend again."

Angela wasn't overjoyed, but she wasn't disappointed either. "It's been a while, Ana."

* * *

"Sorry if it's a bit messy." Ana said as she guided Angela into her living quarters in one of the rooms that connected the tunnels. "Like I said, I wasn't expecting company."

Angela studied the area over in detail as she entered; It was practical, with a workstation where Overwatch's former second in command concocted the serums she used in her rifle and a computer system that she noticed Ana had immediately turned off once they had arrived. Despite this, it had its homely elements too, with a portable burner on a small wooden table keeping a kettle of tea warm in what looked to be a makeshift kitchen and dining area. In the background a very old radio made the occasional crackle, likely as a result of the truly ancient vacuum tubes it had be using, as it quietly went through the tunes on an equally ancient compact disc.

"Come to think of it, I'm not sure just how you managed to find me." Ana mused.

"You aren't very subtle. There's blurry pictures of you in that cat mask on the news most nights," Angela replied bluntly. In the past year, the war Overwatch's former second in command had been waging on Talon had garnered news attention even as far as Oasis. Reports of assault, theft, and firefights had fueled a growing reward plastered across posters that named the culprit only as a mysterious figure called 'Bastet', a direct reference to the pantheon that gave reason for the crypt's existence.

"True enough, but I suppose I was also wondering about how you'd found me in the first place. What was it, two years ago now?"

"I was volunteering in Cairo at the time, remember? You came to me. Even before then, though, I was one of the first people Fareeha told about your letter."

Ana chuckled. "Well, I guess I should have seen that coming. 'Aunt Angie' was always her favourite ever since she was little. She really took a liking to you when she was a teenager as well, around the same time her and I began drifting apart." Her voice slowly drifted off as the old days refreshed themselves until she was mumbling something in Arabic to herself. Angela knew what she was thinking about as well, but at this juncture she simply didn't care. Sentiment couldn't be used to kill.

She took a seat as Ana brought herself back to the present and went to grab a few things from her kitchen, using the moment granted to her to allow herself to breathe again. There had always been something about the old woman, despite her being probably the most capable fighter and tactician Overwatch had ever seen, that made the people who knew her feel comfortable around her, like they were with a trusted friend who cared about them. Angela had always surmised it was her motherly demeanor, but regardless, she slouched over and balanced her head on one hand, propped up on an elbow.

Steam wafted out from the kettle and through the air, lingering in her eyes and making them feel heavy. Exhaustion began to creep in at the same time and as a result, she closed her eyes lazily and began to slump over to gain some overdue rest. She was reawakened, though, by a soft guitar and a soothing voice that floated through the room from the radio.

 **Does your mother tell you things**

 **Long, long when I'm gone?**

 **Who you talking to?**

 **Is she telling you I'm the one?**

 **It's a grave mistake**

 **And I'm wide awake**

"What song is that?" Angela inquired.

Ana perked up, hearing the question but not in its entirety. When she realized the song that was playing, she chuckled. "Oh that? It's Sam's favourite." she said, a wistful look in her eyes as she set a tray with a jar of honey and a sliced lemon on the table and sat down across from Angela. "It's also the song they played on the night he proposed. Nowadays, it keeps him close."

A wide smile crossed her face as she sighed happily. "We were in Vancouver, five years into the Crisis." she reflected. "Overwatch had managed to stop the Omnic advance for the time, and we'd finally managed to get a weekend pass together. The first thing he did once we got them was tell me about this little dance hall he'd go to when he was a teenager. We showed up, had a few drinks, talked, made out, and then he asked for a dance. In retrospect," she smirked. "I should have seen the glint in his eyes and guessed what he was up to. I probably should have guessed as well when the dance floor cleared, leaving just the two of us out there when this song came on."

She wiped away a joyful tear from her eye. "It was the most wonderful night of my life. Just the two of us, holding each other close and staring into each other's eyes. I wanted it to never end. Before the song finished, he got down on one knee, took a ring out of his pocket and said, 'I spent all day trying to come up with just the right thing to say, but I think Gord here put it best.'" She silently directed Angela's attention to the song again, where the soothing voice continued to sing:

 **It's been a long time running**

 **It's been a long time coming**

 **It's been a long, long, long time running**

 **It's well worth the wait**

Ana sniffed in and wiped away another tear while the song faded out.

"Sounds like you still love him." Angela said observantly.

"I never stopped." Ana replied. "The reason why we split was because we were both scared of what would happen if one of us died. In hindsight, I'd say it's one regret I still have."

"Does he know you're alive?"

Ana didn't answer immediately, instead getting up to fetch a teacup for herself and her guest. "No. I haven't seen him since I 'died'." she said at last. "For years I've told myself it's for the best, but recently it doesn't seem that simple. I guess... I just wish that I didn't end up having to fight the good fight alone."

She sighed longingly, staring down at the teacup she had finished pouring. Again the old days made themselves prevalent, curling one side of her mouth up in a smile and drooping the other down. "I've always believed there's a point in everyone's life when you start to realize just who matters the most." she remarked. "For her, it was you. For me, it was always her and Sam. If you're lucky it happens when you're young, but if you get to be this old, well..."  
Her voice involuntarily broke into a scraggly whisper for an instant, but she was able to stuff everything back into its proper place before she continued her thought. "Let's just say there's also a point in life where there's no going back." She drew a handkerchief from underneath her teacup, dabbing it just underneath her nose as she sniffed in again, while her one remaining eyelid batted swiftly.

She soon enough, though, found herself solace in the tea kettle, topping off the pot before putting another one on a slow rise. The methodology she took to the task, a strange mixture of absent-mindedness and purposeful action, bounced off Angela like she was a cold, hard brick wall. Still it was effective: before long, Ana had recomposed herself into her more traditionally upbeat mood. "How do you like your tea?" she asked. "It's Earl Grey."

Angela crossed her arms and focused her eyes towards a wall, seemingly unmarked by her old friend's reminiscing. "Thanks, but recently I've been taking something a little stronger."

"Ah, yes. I heard." Ana replied solemnly, Her eyes focused on the long, red scar across Angela's face as she added a dollop of honey to the doctor's cup and handed it over. "If there's anything I can do, just let me know."

"Thank you, but right now I don't have much need for sympathy." Angela said, sliding the cup back over and beginning to look away to conceal her injury. Out of the blue, however, she changed course, sitting up and looking Ana directly in the eyes for the first time that day. Her old friend could see the pain behind them sparking into a raging fire.

Angela's voice went ice-cold in an instant. "There's one thing you can do for me, though."

It was for fear of what Ana believed her friend was about to say that she had switched off the monitors on her computer. If nearly forty years of almost continual fighting had taught her one thing, it was that every person had a boiling point, and she had known that Angela's had been crossed the moment she showed up on her doorstep.

She responded plainly and slowly. "Anything, but that."

Angela found herself tapping her foot frustratedly on the sandstone floor. "I don't need to know where Reaper is, and I don't need your help. All I need is Jack."

Ana's fears were confirmed in an instant. Lightning-flashes of denial were vivid in her mind, but they subsided as the inescapable truth embedded itself. She turned her head to look down the tunnel opposite the room's entrance, which led down to a lower chamber where the man in question had resided up until recently. "He isn't here." she said quietly. "Jack and I have... parted ways."

Angela was surprised, but still determined. "Why's that? You've been working together since I last met you."

"We were, but things change." She turned back towards Angela, then looked down at the floor, where she could see the doctor tapping one foot with what she assumed to be growing impatience. Clearly, a short answer wasn't going to cut it.  
"Jack's not the person he once was." she continued. As she did, she twisted a dial on the burner. The tea kettle made a low hissing noise as the heat steadily grew.

The hiss rose to a whine. "As time went on and Overwatch's glory days faded, he stopped processing things healthily." she said.

Tufts of smoke rose from the spout. "It didn't matter if it happened twenty years ago or twenty minutes, he wouldn't forgive or forget. He'd shut himself away and stew in all his bitterness and anger until it boiled over."

The kettle began to tremble. "Now, it seems as though he _likes_ it, as though he wants a reason to hate and to kill."

The heat finally reached its peak and the kettle gave off a shrill whistle. "He's on a crusade against everyone he's never forgiven, and he'll go through anyone, ANYONE, who stands in his way." She brushed back a lock of silver hair under the hood she wore. "Every person has a breaking point, and Jack's crossed his."

Before she could say anything else, Angela reached over and turned the dial back, letting the kettle return to the simmer it had been at. "Then I made the right choice." she said resolutely.

"No, you haven't." Ana replied, concern rising in her tone. "I confronted him before he left; It didn't go well, to say the least." She finally let her hood down, careful to keep the lock of hair that draped her forehead just above her eyepatch exactly where it was. "Truthfully... I was seeing less and less of Jack and more and more of Reaper. It's become an obsession, and it's consuming him."

Angela's expression hardened; She wasn't there for the old Jack. "Fine." she said, unflinching. "Just as long as he still knows how to shoot."

"You know as well as I do that that won't work. You'll get yourself killed before you can even try."

"That's why I have this." Angela unhitched the vial of Ghost Serum from her belt and placed it on the table, uncorking the top so Ana could see it vapourize.  
The old woman watched, almost mesmerized by the mist floating up and away and deeply disturbed by what it brought to mind. "Is that-"

"Made using my nanobiotics, among other things. I need Jack because the chemicals used on him and Reyes are a part of it as well. You can guess why it has a bright red handprint smeared on it."

Ana slouched back in her chair and exhaled long and loud. This was far past the breaking point. "So Reyes... he gave you that?"

Angela's words filled with venom and her eyes filled with murderous rage. "And then he looked me in the eye and thanked me. He _thanked me_ for making him into a monster!" She snapped the vial shut and placed it back where she'd kept it. "He called it a 'blessing in disguise'." An ugly sneer twisted itself over her visage. "I guess it'll be ironic when I tell him that he gave me one as well, right before I watch him die."

Ana was both incredulous and scared. "Do you know who you sound like?"

"Someone who's had enough!" Angela shouted as she rose from the table. "If you think that's a bad thing, then I'll get Jack's last known locale off of you and be on my way."  
With large, determined strides she made her way to the computer, and she was about to use it when she was interrupted by her friend's hand on her shoulder. Nearly offended-like, she repulsed back and shook Ana off before staring her down, while at her side her hands curled into white-knuckled fists. She expected a fight, but was surprised when Ana politely excused herself past and turned on the computer. With a few clicks and typed commands, a small, paper-thin holographic projector popped out the side of the screen.

Ana held it in her open palm. "This has the location of the last place I know Jack went. If you really want to find him and kill Reaper, then it's yours."

Before Angela could snatch it away, Ana brought it close. "But first, answer me one question."

Angela raised an eyebrow with a mixture of curiosity and frustration as she silently stared at the device, then at Ana, trying to figure out just where this was going. _Sounds harmless enough_ , she ultimately reasoned.

After a begrudging nod of consent, Ana asked her question. "Where is it going to end?"

Angela was taken mildly aback, but caught on quickly. "It ends when Reaper is dead and I can sleep again."

Dejection crossed Ana's face. "I was afraid you'd say that."

"And why's that?" Angela asked, her tone becoming defensive.

The former Captain of Overwatch knew she had every right to be furious at the stubborn doctor, but two wrongs weren't going to make a right. "Because of Jack. I've been telling you this whole time that nothing ends with him. He's always looking for another reason to fight, to hate. If you go down the path he's taking, the same path that Reyes took, then it won't stop with just one death."

"I thought you said you'd give me the location if I answered you-"

"And I will," Ana said, holding the disc out of Angela's reach. "But first, just listen to me. You can walk away from this right here and now if you want to. An eye for an eye only ends up making everybody blind."

The two were silent for a long moment, their stares clashing pain and vitriol with worry and fear. "I'm begging you." Ana finally said. "Just let it go."

Angela, though, was still undeterred. If anything, she'd been waiting for this moment so she could pounce. "Let me ask _you_ a question: How would you have felt if Reaper had decided you were next? What would you do if he went through Fareeha and Sam in order to get to you, hmm? Would you just 'let it go'?"

"That's going too far." Ana said, anger rising like the steam from the tea kettle.

"No it isn't!" Angela snapped in return. "It's no different than what he did to me, so I'll ask you again: What would you do if he took everything you cared about from you?"

Again, they fell silent, the only sound coming from the sand swirling in the wind above them. In her mind, Ana was forced to confront the argument posed to her, and the only answer she could give left her profoundly uncomfortable.

"Well?" Angela chimed up.

"... I would move heaven and earth."

"My point exactly-"

"But it would be between me and him, no one else, and it would end the moment he died." The wise, grizzled old woman pointed to her eyepatch. "I can't exactly afford to let the cycle continue." she said with grim wit.

Angela seemed unphased. "Well then, since I still have both my eyes," she said coldly as she extended a hand. "the disc."

Ana closed her eyes tightly as she held out the device, as though she was trying to hide the look of defeat in her eyes. She let Angela take hold, but the doctor was forced to wrench it out of her grip, a last futile attempt at keeping the inevitable from happening.

Angela attached the disc to her belt next to the Ghost Serum. "Thank you. It's been nice catching up," she said monotonously as she made her way to the exit. "but I should be going before this intel becomes out-of-date." Once on the stairs, she took off into the night with the flourish of her suit's wings.

Ana didn't watch her leave, rather she fetched herself a fresh cup of tea and sunk into the chair at the computer, finally letting the lock of hair slide off and expose the thin red scar that crossed it. With the press of the keyboard, an old image was called up onscreen, one of the days back when McCree had both arms, Fareeha was a chipper young girl about to start high school, and Jack, Reyes, herself, and Angela were much happier people. The three founding members of Overwatch stood shoulder-to-shoulder, smiling comrades in arms united in a common goal to make the world a better place. Next to them, the doe-eyed doctor, beaming ear to ear, pulled the bunny-ears joke on a typically grouchy-looking Torbjorn.

 _To think we were all so young_ , she reflected. _How did we change so much?_

The more she stared at it, the more the dichotomy of past and present became evident; Her own hair was jet-black rather than silver, Jack's face was full and handsome, Angela had an endless supply of optimism, and even Reyes still looked like a genuinely good person. Each one harkened back to a day so far gone that it felt like another lifetime.

Eventually, though, the present caught up with her memories and. Hair turned shades of gray, eyes turned bloodshot and lined with heavy bags, fearsome masks and dark hoods concealed faces lined with scars, and the-once unassailable friendships soured into bitter, lethal enmity. The worst part of it all was that they each had nothing to blame. Nothing but themselves, and each other.

Unable to stomach any more rancid nostalgia, Ana closed the picture and took a sip of tea.  
 _I hope that you find what you want,_ _Angela_ , she thought. _At least it'll make one of us_.


	6. Chapter 6: A Guiding Light In Hand

_How could everything have gone so_ _wrong_?!

The question looped in Genji's mind endlessly, tortuously, as he attempted to meditate in his quarters in Nepal. With each breath taken in he attempted to clear his mind, to find some piece of tranquility he could hold onto. But with every exhale, he only found his thoughts returning to his disastrous failure and the despair it had brought Angela. After several attempts, he rose to his feet with a flustered huff and paced the small confines like a caged animal, only stopping when a glance out the window revealed that the sunset was casting its rich glow over the monastery.

His frustration grew; It had been hours since he had begun his failed quest for inner peace, and almost a week since he had proclaimed he would do 'whatever he could'. He had returned to his home to try to clarify what was within the realm of possibility, but a calm mind proved tantalizingly out of reach. Every day he had done as he had learned from his mentor Zenyatta, emptying his mind of the concerns of the earthly plane and letting the knowledge and truth of the Iris light the way forward, and yet every day the same lingering worries remained, drawing his attention away from achieving a clear head and leaving him feeling increasingly anxious.

Genji removed his faceplate and splashed his face with water from a sink in the corner of his chamber. Looking in the mirror, he hoped again he could find some kind of peace, but it was shattered when he saw Angela's pained, damaged face reflected back at him, to which he stormed off to pace the room again.

 _Inner peace, inner peace. Let the Iris guide me, let it bless my soul with harmony and knowledge. Inner peace, inner peace. May tranquility find me and lay my sorrow to rest_. The Shambali mantra repeated itself constantly, but its effect was nil; Still he could focus on nothing!

Tired, angry, and stuck on square one, he growled in exasperation as he pounded his fist against the wall. If he couldn't clear his mind and calm himself, then he wouldn't be able to find a solution to his problem, another lesson learned from Zenyatta. Each second that his mind was on her taunted him, reminded him of what he could have done but didn't do, and the consequences he paid for it.

As he pushed himself off the wall and wiped away beads of sweat from his forehead, he realized that spending the last week cooped up had left the room unbearably hot. How he hadn't noticed it before he wasn't sure, but he did know it would be one more distraction he didn't need if he tried to meditate again. With a mechanical creak, he forced open the door and stepped out to take in the cold mountain air.

By this point night had completely fallen, and as such the monastery felt even more serene than usual. The floating statues of Omnic monks that lined the stairway up into the main chamber cast long, moonlit shadows that draped the courtyard, a reminder of the legacy that others in the Shambali had striven to achieve. A chilly wind whistled through the air, leaving behind the clacking of wooden prayer wheels that spun with each gust. This far up the mountain, most other beings would be desperate for whatever breath and warmth they could find. This was no problem for Omnics who didn't need to breathe, while likewise Genji's cybernetics meant that thin air and low temperatures were of little concern.

He ambled out the doorway, shutting it behind him before crouching down at the edge of the stone pedestal his home was perched upon. Again he attempted to meditate, hoping the brisk conditions would give him clarity, but yet again he was met with nothing.

He forced out a tired sigh as he rubbed the exhaustion from his eyes. It had taken him far too long to realize he wasn't going to make any more progress this way, but what other way forward was there?

"I know what I did wrong." the cyborg told himself. "But how do I make it right?"

Once more he racked his brain for answers. The scenario played back for what felt like the hundred thousandth time: Angela's hurt, Tracer and Fareeha's concern, his unrest, and how it all combined together like water and oil. He had been too forceful, his friends too passive. There had to be a middle ground, but where?!

"Send me a sign." he beseeched under his breath.

At almost that very same moment, the glint of the moonlight caught his eye, though it came from the ground rather than overhead. Just at his foot was a frozen patch little more than an inch across. Without any snow to conceal it, it reflected the cloudless sky above, dotted with countless stars and dominated by a full moon.

The cyborg gazed upward, silently regarding the pristine spectacle flickering in the night. He had always had a special appreciation for the stars; In a world marked with drastic change that came faster than anyone could keep up, these little white dots that perforated the dark veil of night were an immovable constant, always returning with the exit of the sun and leaving with its arrival. As a young child, his father had told him that the reason why the stars always stayed the same was because they were tasked by the heavens as witnesses, keepers of the memories made under their watchful gaze. Each star would look down upon the world and when a memory was made under them, they would keep themselves in that same spot forever. This way, whenever you looked back up at them, the memory would be as clear and crisp as the night sky itself.

His father's stories had always rang true, and for Genji tonight was no different. The stars returned his gaze, and a memory sprang to life...

* * *

 _Angela scraped aside a patch of snow as she sat cross-legged on the ground next to her patient._

 _"I was wondering where you'd went." she said, a warm smile crossing her face._

 _Genji didn't answer. His eyes were shut tight like the gates to a fortress and his head hung forward. As gradually as the snow fell, he unclasped his hands and reached for his sword, which had been placed in front of him. Whatever he murmured next Angela couldn't make out; Japanese was a language she hadn't yet mastered._

 _Despite the language barrier, his actions said enough. As such, Angela's tone was cautious. "I heard you did well in the field today. I take it the new exo-suit works?" she asked, referring to the silver and green frame that had recently replaced his older, more spartan prosthetics._

 _Genji again didn't answer, rather he placed the sword back in its sheath and furled his hands together again. What he had come back from doing only a few hours ago was bittersweet: The last remnants of the Shimada clan, the family that had raised him only to cast him aside like some piece of trash, had been wiped out. However, his hated brother, the one directly responsible for the abomination he was now, was long gone with no trail to follow. Revenge had eluded him, leaving him with a bad taste in what was left of his mouth and questions he nor anyone else in Overwatch could answer. Because of this, Geneva wasn't a place for him to be, at least not for much longer._

 _Angela, likewise, had figured out that something was off. Genji had been a social recluse since his rebuilding, but he had always at least checked in with her whenever he returned from the field. What he was brooding on today, she surmised, must have been especially burdensome, so the doctor decided to make a house call._

 _"Not much happened while you were away. Winston and I tinkered with Athena, Jack and Gabriel found something new to argue about. Oh, and Tracer and Torbjorn emptied a jar of peanut butter into Reinhardt's helmet." she said through a snicker. "It might have been something you had to see for yourself, but this past week has been the most I've seen anyone here laugh for a long time."_

 _S_ _he was just about to continue when she heard Genji laugh too, warm and genuine. It was gone as quickly as it had shown up, but for an instant he had let down that stoic exterior and shown a glimpse of who was still inside, the man that Angela had seen since the beginning. A moment of vulnerability that, based on how quickly he recovered himself and how he curled down and away in his spot after it happened, had caught him as much by surprise as it did her._

 _Angela wisely chose not to pry, instead returning to the reason she'd sought him out in the first place."Would you mind if I stayed here a little longer? It's been a while since we got to sit down and just chat."_

 _Genji was motionless, showing no response. She knew he'd heard her, however. This was far from the first time their conversations had been one-sided._

 _"I know, I know, I'm 'being such a doctor' again," she said half-jokingly, in reference to how previous exchanges had gone. "but part of that is that there are duties I can't shirk." A thin, understated smile spread across her lips as she looked over at him. "Besides," she explained, checking behind herself to make sure that no one was watching before sliding over closer until her chin was almost resting on his shoulder. "you make good company."_

 _Though the Geneva winters had never been a problem for Genji, a chill shot down his spine and made him actively keep himself from shivering. She was a doctor, no doubt bound by the Hippocratic Oath to be uninvolved with him outside of checkups, but in situations such as these the signals he got were mixed. Was she simply looking over his shoulder, innocently, platonically curious about what he was doing that she couldn't see? Or was there something more, something that was said without saying a word? Was it something that was conveyed through her sparkling blue eyes, flawless smile, her flowing platinum hair and how a stray lock hung over her cheek? Or was it something that he saw within, how she treated his wretched self as though he weren't a mechanical freak and instead as a good man, pure and simple..._

 _"So?" she inquired again. "Can I stay? If you say no that's fine, but brooding or no brooding, I do need an answer."_

 _From another patch of snow next to him, the cyborg reached for his faceplate and placed it back on. Once again, his soft parts were fully concealed by cold metal._

 _For the first time that day, he turned to look her in the eye. "No thank you." he answered, his voice rendered monotonous by the machine that replaced what was left of his vocal cords. "Your offer is kind, but I would prefer to be alone."_

 _Angela's smile faded as she shrunk away, folding in her shoulders and brushing the stray lock of platinum hair off her cheek. "Very well then." she stated, her head bowed in outward respect and inward disappointment. "But before I go, I'll not have you catching a chill."_

 _As she stood up, she unfurled a hand-stitched afghan and placed it over his shoulders before making her way back to the door, which slid open automatically as she neared. Genji expected her to leave immediately, but instead she lingered in the doorway for just a bit longer._

 _"If you want to stay out here," she said. "I'll be back in half an hour to check up on you again."_

 _She went to stand up, but something she'd almost forgotten to say made its presence known. "I just remembered: It's Thursday, so everyone's in the lounge. There's pool, cards, table tennis, Mario Kart, the usual."_

 _The cyborg ninja perked up slightly. The weekly social known as 'game night' that had been started years ago when Torbjorn jury-rigged an old video game to work on a holo-TV was one of the few interactions with the rest of the team he permitted himself, especially since he'd never lost a game of table tennis in his life._

 _When Angela continued, he declined his head again, hoping that she hadn't noticed.  
_ _"If you want to stay out here, that's just fine," she said. "so long as you keep that blanket with you. If you do change your mind though, I'll leave a light on." With that, she reached around the crook of the door frame and flipped a switch that sparked a porch light just above her head to life. "You know where to find me."_

 _With the snow underfoot masking her steps and the stillness of the night producing a deafening quiet, Genji guessed prematurely when she had walked out of sight, and as such proceeded with the intention of doing something he didn't want her to see. When she spoke up again, it froze him in place like a statue._

 _"Oh, and Genji?" she asked, looking over her shoulder._

 _The cyborg expected her to provide one last piece of medical advice, but what he heard instead was a pleasant surprise._

 _"You have a wonderful laugh." she said, simple and sweet. With that, the door shut behind her and Genji was once more alone in the cold._

 _Now that he was assuredly by himself, he returned to his previous action, pulling the afghan tightly around his shoulders and let its warmth radiate through him. Curling in under it, he looked up and saw that the night sky glistened with what must have been a million stars, each one bearing witness to this moment, keeping its memory forever..._

* * *

"You have the appearance of someone deep in contemplation, my friend." a calm, electronic voice hummed.

Genji peered over his shoulder to see that the source of the voice was floating just a few feet behind him. As per usual, Zenyatta's golden orbs were in their orbit, shimmering as they passed, but in one hand that was usually kept in a meditative stance, the Omnic monk held Angela's afghan, folded up under his arm.

Genji smirked at the timing of the situation, but followed it up with an inaudible sigh; His teacher had always said that there is no such thing as coincidence. "That was the intention, master." he replied.

"And would you call the endeavour successful?"

Genji declined his head. He knew exactly where this was going, and though he didn't like it one bit it seemed inevitable.

"I sense that the Iris eludes you." Zenyatta continued. "Discord stirs like the sea in a storm." Though the design of his face made him look continually ambivalent, his tone indicated genuine care. "May I peer under the appearance of contemplation?"

As much as Genji didn't want to talk about it because he knew it would hurt, he didn't see any other options. He'd tried everything he could on his own to no avail, and being unopen wasn't going to solve it. "It's about Angela. She is... hurt."

Zenyatta cocked his head. "Pain is a common concept." he said. His friend and pupil was understating, perhaps to ease the pain. But Shambali teachings said that the heaviest burdens cannot be shouldered alone, hence why he pried further. It also helped that this wasn't the first time this scenario had played out, so he knew how to best aid a mildly irate cyborg ninja.

"Not like this. Gabriel Reyes, the Reaper, has committed a terrible act against her, perhaps the worst imaginable, and the pain has consumed her entirely."

He puffed up his chest with a deep breath, drawing upon what strength he could muster. "She is no longer the angel who saved me, who cared for me. I-I don't know who she is anymore." he said through a suddenly trembling voice. "I want her back. The Angela I knew, but... I don't know if I can." He raised his hand and buried his face in it as the flood of emotion he could no longer stifle came forth.

Zenyatta regarded his pupil as a warm feeling spread through his circuits. In a single, silent movement, he floated down beside Genji, hovering just off the surface of the snow. From here, they were almost level with each other. "Angela must have been a truly special person." he said as he unfurled the afghan and spread it around the cyborg's shoulders.

" _Is_." Genji corrected as he recomposed himself, wiping shiny streaks of tears off his palm. "And always will be." He turned to face the Omnic monk, again mustering the courage to talk. "Have you ever loved someone, master?"

Zenyatta made no visible reaction, but inside the circuitry of his mind he knew that progress was being made. "I love all my brothers and sisters here at the monastery, and I love all living things, for they are all equal in the Iris."

Genji smirked; He figured he should have seen that answer coming from a mile away. "As do I of course, but that wasn't exactly what I meant. I meant have you ever _loved_ someone, someone truly special?"

Mentally, Zenyatta smiled. Now they were getting to the root of the matter. "I have read that love is a smoke made with the fumes of sighs."

This made the cyborg ninja chuckle. "Where did you find that?"

"There are more texts here than just Shambali scripture. Though I do see your point: I believe our experiences diverge on this matter." His hands clasped together into a meditative stance. "Would it be imprudent to ask if you could... elaborate on them?"

Genji chuckled again. "I'm not sure if I can explain-"

"Just do your best."

There was a long pause as Genji's gaze switched pensively between his teacher, the night sky, and the courtyard of the monastery. "I guess," he finally said. "it's like this blanket."

He pulled the afghan tight around his shoulders, a light dusting of wind-blown snow floating down to the ground. "When you first find it there's something that tells you it's special, even though you don't know why. But the more time you spend with it, the more you realize you need it in your life. That when you have it, them, with you, you feel like an entirely different person. You feel warm on a cold night, you feel safe when you're all alone, you feel hope when all seems lost." A twinge of happiness and regret coloured his voice. "You feel blessed for every single moment you get with them. You feel like you could move heaven and Earth itself because you know they'd do the same for you."

In the silence that followed, Zenyatta took careful notice of the wording and tone used. The wonder in the description, the remorse in the last sentence, the glint behind his student's eyes. The Iris was presenting the pieces needed to solve the puzzle, now he just had to guide his lovestruck student in putting them together.

"Have you spoken with Angela since her tragedy?" he inquired. Though he was almost sure of the response, he wanted to hear it from Genji himself.

"Yes." A wordless look down at the snow-speckled stone concurrently answered the natural follow-up of how it went.

By now, it was almost all pieced together, save for one last part. "Even a mistake carved in stone may be corrected if found before the dust is blown away." the monk said.

"I know where you are going, master." Genji replied tiredly. To him, this wasn't the time or place for a proverb. "I know exactly what my mistake was. The others didn't try hard enough, while I was too forceful. I let the discord get the best of me and for the last week I have paid a terrible price because of it. I fear..."

A sudden shortness of breath forced a long silence. What he feared had festered in his thoughts like a rotting wound and caused many sleepless nights for the past week, but saying it out loud did more to steal the air from his lungs than the altitude ever could. He buried his face in the crook of the afghan while Zenyatta floated in and wrapped a comforting arm around him.

When Genji had regathered the air needed to speak, his voice had been rendered to little more than a murmur. "I fear that I made her pain worse, and that it will destroy her. I swore I would repay her for what she gave me all those years ago, but... I cannot. Not alone." He looked up with desperation. " There has to be a middle ground, something between what failed before. I need your help, master. For her sake."

Mentally, Zenyatta was beaming. At last the puzzle had been pieced together, and the solution was as clear as anything. "Angela walks a dark path, alone with the weight of of guilt and forsakenness." he said.

"Tell me something I don't know." Genji spat in reply, making no effort to conceal that this wasn't what he was expecting to hear.

"Very well then." The monk's voice was still as calm as ever. "You know what path she travels, but do you know the one time that the forlorn traveler is not alone?"

Under the mask, Genji pursed what remained of his lips. The one being he thought could help him, could actually see what he wanted to do and find a way to make it work, and all he did was ask pointless questions and speak in infuriating proverbs. With a huff, he tossed the afghan aside and stood up to head back inside his quarters.

He would have, if Zenyatta had not spoken up again.

"When a friend stands at the path's entrance with a guiding light in hand."

Why Genji stopped before he could shut the door he didn't know. Maybe it was out of some cynical desire to hear the rest of his dogma, or maybe it was some last vestige of faith in the friend who had helped him find peace all those years ago. Either way, it didn't matter: He'd stopped, and he was going to hear him through.

The orbiting globes around Zenyatta's neck took on a mystical blue glow as he spoke again. "Each traveler comes to these crossroads on their journey. One way is long and difficult, but leads to absolution. The other is shorter and looks easier, but the road is obscured, and there is no way of knowing what is on the other side."

The monk looked over his shoulder. Sure enough, Genji was still there, one arm resting on the doorframe. "I know what you are thinking: Why would anyone choose the path they can't see down? Surely any rational person wouldn't. But therein lies the problem; Perhaps they who choose the dark path aren't using the same logic as everyone else. Perhaps they are driven by anger, sadness, or the desire for vengeance of a terrible tragedy. Perhaps they feel as though their soul is unclean because of what someone did to those they cared about, or what someone they cared about did to them."

By now, Genji's attention was undivided, even though he still faced the other way. The parallel being drawn seemed so obvious he silently cursed himself for not seeing it earlier; After his near-death and reconstruction, he had been no different than she was now.

"If the traveler chooses the dark path, they do so of their own choice, and as such cannot be forced off it even if it leads to their own destruction." Zenyatta continued. "There is still though, even in their most dire time, a chance for redemption. Someone whom the traveler cherishes, whom they genuinely care for, may stand at the entrance and offer to guide them to safety."

Genji's eyes narrowed in anger; That's what he'd _tried_ to do, but he'd been forced to back off! He wanted to turn around and chastise his teacher for misunderstanding the point, but the temptation and the feeling both fled before they could be acted upon. Rashness had gotten him as far as acquiescence did the others, so it was time to consider the new approach.

"They must not try to make them turn back, but they must also not walk away simply because of a denial. When protests arise, they must stand like the oak tree, unyielding but unmoving. This way, should the traveler change their mind, they will see the light has been kept on, and they will know where to find you."

Barely a second had passed before Zenyatta could hear the sound of metal on wood and a door being swung shut, though not with enough vigor to indicate annoyance. Mentally, the monk smiled. "I have done all I can, my friend." he whispered. "Now, it is your turn. May the Iris let you find what you seek."

With a final iridescent glow of his orbs, the monk floated off.

* * *

 _Should the traveler change their mind, they will see the light has been kept on, and they will know where to find you._

The last few words of his master looped in Genji's mind endlessly, invigoratingly, as he tore apart his chambers like a man possessed. No sooner had they been uttered when what he had failed to do the entire week came to him all at once. Clarity, and some sage advice, had presented exactly what he was looking for. Now all he needed were three more things.

Rifling through a dresser drawer produced two of them: The shard of the staff and the locket. The third and final, and the most critical step of his new plan, felt like it was going to be much more difficult.

Turning on the holo-computer next to his bed, Genji went over at least a dozen different things he could have said. Ultimately though, it was never in doubt. What they would say in return was more doubtful, but there was one way this was going to work, and it couldn't be without them. His best shot was going to have to do.

With a brief flicker, the screen split vertically in two down the middle, one side with Tracer's picture over a buzzing Overwatch icon, the other with Fareeha's. For the first time in what felt like forever, he felt focused, and it made him feel more alive than ever.

Now, as the still images gave way to live feeds, he once again mentally repeated the Shambali mantra. _Inner peace, may tranquility find me and lay my sorrow to rest._

 _Both mine, and Angela's_.


	7. Chapter 7: Trigger

Finding Jack was one thing. Recruiting him, if that's what she was doing could be called, was another entirely.

Angela wasn't surprised that Ana's intel was spot-on: The former second-in-command of Overwatch had always been impeccably good at spy work, and subtlety was never one of Jack's strong suits. What she was surprised by, however, was the conundrum of easy and difficult it had been to track him down.

The disc she had gotten was terribly outdated; The earliest commercial holographic projection technology had come out almost forty years ago due to corporate demand, resulting in a rushed release with a bevy of technical problems. Angela had had to scour the Internet and use her own know-how just to get it to work for more than a few seconds before shorting out. When she did, however, it led her to her current location: A ratty little three-floor apartment on the outskirts of Tehran that looked like it was from a bad horror film.

When she walked inside, the first thing that caught her attention wasn't the affronting odor of cigarette smoke mixed with ammonia, or the stained wallpaper peeling off of decaying wood, or the fact that all the windows were taped over with newspaper. Rather, it was that the gaunt, wrinkled person behind the lobby desk didn't so much as bat an eyelid over a woman in a shining white outfit with wings on her back that had just come through the front door.

 _Now I know I'm in the right place,_ she thought to herself. _For someone who's not supposed to exist_ , y _ou don't seem to be keeping off the radar very well Jack_.

Having found a relatively clean corner of the lobby to stand in for the moment, she reached for the holo-disc in her pocket and called forth the image on it; A mugshot of Jack as a man in his late fifties, clearly showing his status as a combat veteran through a litany of facial scars and the tired look in his eyes. It was a far cry from the young, hopeful leader that Angela knew when she was finishing up college, the patriarch of the surrogate family that had taken her under their wing.

Ana had warned that Jack wasn't the man he used to be, so the picture she saw, like the device itself, could have been old, but it was something she didn't put much stock in. All that mattered was that Jack still had what it took and could still do what he had to, and by all accounts it looked like he did. Whereas Ana had been able to keep her return a mystery to most, the former Strike Commander had been a much louder kind of mysterious, the kind that Atlas News pundits wrote opinion pieces on and made dangerously accurate speculations regarding just who the infamous "Soldier: 76" really was.

"Can I help you?" the attendant brusquely requested in Persian.

Angela took no notice at first, but a louder repetition of the question grabbed her attention for one reason.

The raspy, almost whispered growl was a near-dead ringer for Reaper.

When Angela heard it, her eyes were wide open in an instant and she just about screamed as she dropped the disc and shot to attention, desperately looking around for where the sadistic shadow was, listening for the sounds of a trigger being pulled and a bullet screaming through the air before making impact.

Eventually reason prevailed though, and when the adrenaline subsided she realized that the only person in the room with her was the secretary, who eyeballed her in a way that looked both confused and disgustingly intrigued. Simultaneously, a tinge of pain flared in her scar, causing her to place her hand over it and massage it lightly.

A sense of conviction grew within her: It wasn't the first time in recent memory that she'd been laid out by something out of the blue, but with all hope it would be the last. Once again she silently affirmed that Reyes was a cancer, and as a doctor she had to cut it out for good.

After all, that's why she was here.

She picked up the holo-disc and went to put it away, but realized that it could be of use so it stayed in her hand. As she walked over to the desk, her mind flipped through her knowledge of the local language, trying to find the right phrase to say in reply. As a medic and former Overwatch agent, she had a solid understanding of various dialects and knew a few key phrases, but mastering them all was something she kept herself too busy to do, and the unpleasant demeanor of the clerk led her to conclude that non-verbal communication wouldn't make any progress.

She placed the disc gently on the desktop. "I'm looking for this man." she replied also in Persian, though not without a few awkward pauses to find the right word or syntax. "Where is he?"

"What's it to you?"

Angela sighed inaudibly; The last thing she wanted to do was draw out her interaction with this creep and risk another panic attack. Reaching into her back pocket, she produced a small stack of banknotes and slid them over to his side of the desk. "I'd rather not answer questions."

Having counted up the notes and stowing them away, the attendant flashed a snaggle-toothed grin. "Ah, money. The true universal language. You should have led with that move, darling. That is, unless you are open to another form of payment, hmm? After all, you do seem pretty skittish. You could use some... R&R."

His pass was shut down by a dagger-eyed scowl that threatened to follow up with something even worse if he didn't do what she wanted. With a quick point towards the stairs and some simple directions, he fulfilled his end of the bargain and Angela was on her way, more than happy to leave him in the dust.

"Of all the places to hide, Jack." she muttered once she was out of earshot.

* * *

The second floor was just as seedy, only the smell here was of cheap booze and mold. On the third floor the smell grew stronger, while the eerie quiet of the lobby was replaced by creaking floorboards and old springs bouncing on the other side of a door with a necktie on the handle.

Even though the smell nearly caused her to gag, Angela decided to press on. The key to ending her problems was just at the end of the hall, and dammit if she wasn't going to give up this chance.

Jack's door was easy to pick out, it being the only one with no peephole and no room number, both presumably removed some time ago. Trying the door showed it to be locked; Angela berated herself under her breath for not getting a key from that sleazebag before. There was no chance in hell she was going back down there now to fetch one.

 _Only one option then. Guess I'll have to be direct._

She gave the door a few ginger raps. "Jack? Jack, it's Angela. Angela Ziegler. Do you remember me?"

There was no response, so she knocked again. "I've been looking for you. We need to talk."

Still no response. The possibility that he wasn't home crossed her mind, but she decided to try one more time regardless. "I need your help."

For several minutes, everything was dead silent; Not even the floorboards and springs made their noisy presence known. Finally, with a growing notion of dejection, Angela went to leave and find a spot to await his return.

At least, that's what she was going to do.

The quiet was shattered by the squeal of rusty hinges being coerced into movement. She froze in her tracks and looked over her shoulder for the source, which proved to be Jack's door, now unlatched marginally by forces unknown.

With no time wasted, she peered through the crack in the doorway but saw nothing. When she opened it further, she still saw nothing. None of the lights in whatever excuse for a room this was were on, and feeling around in the dark for a switch proved fruitless.

Reaching behind her as she entered, she opened the door further still to try to bring some illumination, but the only thing she saw was her shadow on the floor. "Jack?" she called out, but all she got was more silence.

Until the door suddenly slammed shut behind her.

She gasped and whirled around, but before she could re-open it a dull thump made her look behind her again. Her eyes darted around, trying in vain to pierce the dark for the sound's origin. She didn't dare ask who was there; Not only was she terrified of who or what might answer, it would have been highly ironic.

It wasn't long though before her heartbeat slowed and reason took hold again, just like it had earlier. There was no one else here. In a place as rickety as this, it was probably just some piece of structure wasting away. Reassured, she wiped a trickle of sweat off her brow and readied to leave and await Jack's return.

Until a swift hit to the head knocked her out onto the floor.

* * *

When Angela came to, she felt like she'd just landed headfirst off a cliff, and through her clouded vision it seemed as though the room was spinning. It took a moment for her to realize that she wasn't on the ground, but instead sitting in a chair with her hands duct-taped behind her.

 _How the hell did this happen?_ was the first coherent thought that ran through her dazed mind. _More importantly, why the hell did this happen?_

As the room stopped turning like the blades of a helicopter and a better degree of consciousness was regained, she went to stand up, but quickly remembered that she was tied down for some reason. _Verdammt._

All of a sudden, a single light was switched on, piercing the pitch-black room and shining down from directly above. Angela grimaced as her eyes, which were just beginning to adjust to the dark, were momentarily blinded. Though she couldn't see, she could hear the thud of combat boots from behind her, getting closer with each slow step.

A brief moment of panic subsided as she realized it couldn't be Reaper; If he were here, she wouldn't have survived the first blow. Not since that monster had gotten his sick kicks in back at her own home. With the impossible ruled out, that left only one other conclusion.

When he rounded her position and took up a chair of his own right in front of her, the conclusion was confirmed. As her eyesight finally acclimated to the light, Jack was staring her down. Or at least, she assumed it was; While the silver hair was visible, the old soldier had obscured his other features behind a jet-black carbon fiber faceplate not unlike Genji's and a thin, glowing red visor.

 _Not the man he used to be indeed._

"Who are you?" he demanded.

Angela noticed that on top of no longer being one for pleasantries, his voice was gruffer than she remembered. "Like I said, Jack. It's me."

Whatever reaction he had was impossible to read under the visor.

"Angela Ziegler." she added. "Don't you remem-"

"I remember. That's why I opened the door. But even so I can't afford to be careless." He hunched over in his chair, propping himself up with one arm. "That's why you're tied up."

Angela found herself caught off guard. Even though she was being treated like some common criminal, what he said and what he did made sense. If she hadn't been who she was, he could have been caught in a trap. She even figured she'd have done the same thing, given the circumstances.

"You're going to answer some questions for me." Jack growled. "If I like what I hear, you'll be fine."

Angela briefly asked herself what happened if he didn't like what he heard, but then she saw his pulse rifle leaning on one of the legs of his chair, and one of his hands draping over it.

Her attention was turned back to him as he purposefully cleared his throat. "First of all, how did you find me?"

"Ana told me."

Though his face was still unreadable, the pause that followed showed his surprise. Angela took advantage of that. "I've got proof with me. In my left-hand pocket."

He glared her down for a few more moments before slowly reaching for where she described. When he pulled his hand back, he was regarding the holo-disc and when he found the activation button, he was face to face with himself, or rather himself as a slightly younger man.

The fact that his actions showed he was still hesitant, again, made sense to Angela. While it was almost common knowledge that Talon wouldn't have stood a chance trying to catch Ana, there were plenty of other places and other people they could have gotten such a device from.

Jack tossed the disc aside as it shorted out. "Second question." he hissed. "How do I know you're who you say you are?"

Yet again, Angela found herself understanding Jack's reason, mildly incredulous as his question was. "What do you want from me?" she asked.

"Tell me something only the real Angela would know."

Scrolling through memories felt like walking through a minefield; One misstep would be her last.

 _Versailles? No, it was on the news._

 _Paraguay? Nein, other people were there._

 _Geneva just before the Uprising mission? That would work, but would he accept it_ _?_

Her eyes glanced down at the pulse rifle, where Jack's right hand was drifting closer to the trigger with each second she stayed silent.

 _Trigger_... _That's it!_

"Eight years ago." she blurted.

Jack perked up, though he kept his hand near the gun.

"Eight years ago, just before the staged attack on the U.N. and the fall of Geneva, you and I met in your office for your annual psych evaluation."

Jack's head lowered, but under the visor's glow it was obvious his eyes were narrowing.

"It was the first time anyone in the building had seen you in person for nearly ten days. You tried to dismiss me, but I insisted. Then when I finally got you to sit down, you tried to convince me you were 'just fine'. It took six hours, but finally you told me what was wrong."

Jack's glare narrowed further and his hand curled into a tight fist.

"You told me that you had had enough of losing the good fight. That every time you sat at your desk you were drowning in a sea of red tape and excuses. That everything you had worked so hard to build was being torn down around you. You said you wished that-"

"I could just pull a trigger," he interrupted. "and make all my problems go away."

Angela breathed a quiet sigh of relief, until Jack suddenly rose from his seat and drew a combat knife as he stepped over to her. She braced for the incoming attack, silently hoping that it'd be quick and painless.

With two swift strokes, the duct tape that restrained her was sliced away.

When she opened her eyes again, she realized that she'd been freed. As she massaged her wrists she thought that once again, Jack was making sense to her.

" _Danke_." she said through a deep breath.

"Why are you here?" Jack inquired as he sank back into his chair and sheathed his knife.

Angela felt determination growing inside as she took a better sitting posture. "Like I said before, I need your help."

"With what?"

"What else?"

It was barely a second before he had deduced what she meant. "No." he answered candidly.

"Why not? I have just as much reason to want him dead as you do, or did you not see the four hundred and thirty six people that were murdered just to get to me?"

"And you think that compares to the thousands that died just to get to me?!" He stood up in a flash of rage. "For twenty years, Gabriel Reyes ate through Overwatch's core like a parasite. Twenty. Long. Years, all of it just under my nose. I could have found it if I hadn't been so damn blind!" he snapped.

It looked like for a brief time that he was going to shout something else, but whatever it was died on his tongue as he dropped back into his seat. "After I learned that Reyes had survived and Overwatch was dismantled, I... I got low. I didn't see another way out, so I tried to pull the trigger you mentioned earlier on myself." he said. "But at that moment, I realized something."

His voice deepened to a snarl. "I realized that if I were dead, there'd be no one left to put an end to him, and with Overwatch gone there was nothing to stand in my way. That bastard took everything I ever cared about from me, so I had to take everything from him. But you can't understand that Angela, and do you know why?"

He answered his own question before she could retort. "Because you're a pacifist. You say your focus is on saving lives, but all it really means is that when things get ugly, you roll over and do nothing until it's too late."

Angela was a mixture of affronted and sympathetic. He'd shown her exactly what he thought, and now it was her turn. "Back then, I was even more blind than you were. Back then, I thought I could solve all the world's problems without spilling a drop of blood. I joined Overwatch because I believed they could do just that, but in the end I was so sick of the excuses that I never wanted to step foot in Geneva ever again. I thought I could leave it behind by doing things my way, but I've realized the hard way that time doesn't heal all wounds."

She took in a long, deep breath, forcing hot blood through her veins that stoked discontent into simmering rage. "I made the same mistakes you did, Jack. I paid the same prices, all far beyond what I can afford. I've lost everything I had left, I've been as low as you were, and I've come to the same conclusions you did just before I could pull my trigger."

As she spoke, Jack could see a glint in her eyes. "You're leading somewhere with this."

"There's two reasons why I came to you and why you need me. The first is that, as I said, I have just as much reason as you to want him dead."

Despite her obvious conviction, doubts still lingered in Jack's thoughts. "What do you think you're going to do if you and I find him? Shoot him? How do I know you've got the nerve?"

Her fury grew to a boiling point as tears began to fill her eyes. "You really think I'm that one-dimensional?" she seethed. "He deserves much, MUCH worse than just straight death."

She held out one hand and counted up on her fingers. "I don't want to just kill him; I want to destroy him. He'll know what it feels like to have everything taken from him, and to know that it's his actions that caused it. Then, I'll thank him for giving me the means to do it, for giving me a blessing in disguise." Her hand now moved to wipe away the tears as they streamed down her cheek and stung her scar. "Then, and not before then, will I kill him."

Jack cocked his head slightly: She'd been planning this. "And how do you plan on doing that, hm?" he asked skeptically. "You don't have anything that can physically hurt him."

Her smile widened slightly. "Yes I do."

From the opposite pocket of where the disc was, she took out the vial, still stained with her handprint, and tossed it into Jack's hands. "Open it." she said.

He didn't know what to expect, but with a few twists of the cap, anything he could have imagined was shattered in the blink of an eye as he saw the liquid within evaporate into puffs of black mist.

A black mist that he was all too familiar with.

"This..." he stuttered, taken completely aback. "This is-"

"The second reason I need your help. Reyes called it 'Ghost Serum'." she interjected. "It's essentially his lifeblood, and it was made using genetic therapy, my nanobiotics, and the same chemicals that made you a super-soldier. If I can study it, we could use it to kill him, once and for all."

"How do I know you're willing to use it?" he replied as he closed the vial. "Last I remember you were adamant about using your tech for healing only."

"Because it was his blessing in disguise. Ever since then, I've found a possibility beyond just making the blind see or the crippled walk. _That,_ was what I discovered before I could pull my trigger."

A glint identical to Angela's now formed in Jack's eyes. No longer was he skeptic about her devotion to the mission or the nerve she possessed. With her help, he could finally bring Reyes down to his level and give that cold-blooded bastard his own trigger to pull.

He arose from his seat at the same time Angela did hers. The two of them wordlessly assessed each other, eye to visor, one last time before embracing in a steely handshake.

"When do we start?" he asked as he handed back the vial.

"Right away." she answered confidently. "First, we'll need to retrieve some files on the genetic therapy aspect, as well as a datapad with my own work." A smile cracked along her face. "Fortunately, I know who has both."


	8. Chapter 8: Potential For Surprise

The best thing about her work was that it never ceased to surprise.

As the centrifuge's steady hum died down as its rotation came to a halt, Moira eagerly redirected her attention towards it and the next step in her procedure. Once she had extracted the palm-sized glass container inside with a pair of tongs, she reached into her shirt pocket and retrieved a holo-recorder.

She spoke plainly into it: "The formula has been mixed for exactly one minute longer than it was for Test Seven. Though I still hypothesize that there won't be any major difference, the scientific method demands I carry it out regardless. After all, 'once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.' Sir Arthur Conan Doyle."

Placing the recorder back in her pocket, she grabbed a needle and syringe and plunged it through the stopper into the dirty yellow concoction, though her withered hand stiffened unexpectedly as it neared the receptacle. A quick shake returned it to normal, but she did make a mental note to record the event once the test was concluded.

She regarded the needle curiously as she again spoke into her recorder. "The formula appears stable, but then again it did during Test Seven as well. Perhaps a different heating temperature before Test Nine will work, but first things first."

Momentarily pausing her entry, she first reached to turn down the classical melody that played as ambiance in her lab, then for a Petri dish filled with Ghost Serum. "Commencing Test Eight." she said, and with that the the syringe's contents were emptied into the dish.

Throughout the process Moira had just completed, she had maintained a feeling of disappointed skepticism; Most of this day had been spent tinkering with this particular idea with no results to speak of, at least nothing workable. For a scientist of her caliber and self-perception, tinkering was always amusing, but no fruit borne from it was simply intolerable. Therefore, it was to her great surprise and relief that when the formula made contact with the Ghost Serum, the latter seemed to flash freeze, with black tips of mist protruding from the upper layer like jagged peaks. Out of curiosity she jabbed the solidified substance with her needle, which when penetrated quickly returned to its original form.

A smug grin stretched across her pencil-thin lips as she again produced her recorder. "It would seem my hypothesis was incorrect. As opposed to previous tests, this variation of Dr. Ziegler's nanobiotics, when heated and mixed with super-cooled oxygen and calcium, is capable of rendering pure magnesium bioxide triethylamine-24 into a solid, a state previously thought impossible." She placed the Petri dish and the needle into a sink and strolled over to an adjacent counter as she talked. "However, the process is far from complete: It appears only the surface layer is solidified in Petri dish tests, and if perforated it quickly returns to normal. I shall have to discover what happens when I move to living subjects."

On the counter she had arrived at was Angela's datapad from the last time they'd met, which Moira jotted several notes and equations into, ending with what she was going to alter for her next experiment and a quick estimate of how likely she thought the chances of success were.

Her smile widened in self-satisfaction: This was why she stayed in the game.

It wasn't because Doomfist provided ample funding in exchange for unwavering fealty, because her seats on the Council and the Oasis Ministry made her (without a word of hyperbole) one of the most powerful people alive, and it sure as hell wasn't because Gabriel Reyes, or Reaper as her former Blackwatch associate-turned-lab rat insisted on being called, needed a caretaker to make sure his condition didn't go horribly wrong. These were fringe benefits at best and demeaning obligations at worst, things the world's leading geneticist should have been above. No, similar to Amelie Lacroix's sensations of killing, Moira felt a thrill of sorts when in her laboratory, with no one to weigh her down, the limit of the sky to transcend, and an itch in her brilliant mind to scratch.

To achieve this scientific nirvana had been her life's aspiration; Nothing else had ever had any meaning to her. From graduating _summa cum laude_ from Cambridge at the age of fifteen, to sharpening the cutting edge of genetic therapy, to taking her place at both the tables of Talon and Oasis like how Richard III had ascended to the English throne in her favourite play, everything she had done had been to satiate her desire to push science forward. It didn't really matter what field she was pursuing; Genetics just happened to be something she was good at. All she wanted to do was break its limits.

Still, like what the Church did with Galileo and the city of Athens with Socrates, she had been opposed at almost every turn. But where the Omnic Crisis had been one thing, a force of nature beyond her control, even necessary if Doomfist's grandeur was to be believed, the scientific communities that had condemned her still struck a raw nerve, in particular the then-blossoming one within Overwatch.

She seethed in anger as the memory bubbled up to the surface. Overwatch, in particular Dr. Angela Ziegler, had nearly destroyed her career twelve years ago with their condemnation of her methods and results, something she was reminded of every time the two of them crossed paths in Oasis. Often, it took all her restraint to not want to throttle that pacifist bitch, and even then the disdain the two had for each other would hang in the air like a bad smell on a hot day. _But that was then_ , Moira reminded herself. _Science never looks back, not when the future lies just ahead._

Leaving the datapad on the desk, she turned up the volume of the classical music and snapped up a fresh syringe for her next test, her next chance to blow past the limits of yesteryear.

But then the alarm sounded.

The shrill screech broke her concentration in such a manner that she was forced to cover her ears, nearly sticking herself with the needle in the process. Incensed, she placed the needle back where she'd taken it from and went for the two-way speaker next to the lab's entrance.

"I can only hope that this interruption is necessary." she said through tightly pursed lips.

"I'm sorry Minister," a young, nasally voice replied over the alarm's blare. "but there's been an intruder alert."

Moira was less than impressed, and incompetence made her even more haughty and sarcastic than usual."And you haven't resolved this issue yet because... let me guess; The intruders have simply disappeared?"

"Well, um, y-yes. Yes Minister. When the security detail arrived, we'd already lost the trail."

Moira rolled her eyes. _Where does Reyes get these idiots?_

"But we do have footage of them. W-would you like to see?"

"Send it over." the geneticist replied through a sigh.

As the images were uploaded to her lab's holo-screen, the thought of using that insolent little troglodyte as a human guinea pig crossed her mind, giving a moment's pleasure to dampen her growing irritation. Sometimes, it seemed like if it wasn't one thing, it was another. In all likelihood, this was just a false alarm or some drill that no one had remembered was scheduled, i.e. a complete waste of her time.

The footage that played back showed something entirely different.

It was only a few seconds long and ended with the camera being shot, but the information it gave was all too telling. The retracted wings on the woman's white attire, the red visor and pulse rifle the man used, the hallway, everything. It all pointed in one direction: Right towards where she was.

Her shocked facial reaction was almost reflexively quick. A chill shot down her spine and the fearful question of how they'd found her flashed through her thoughts. Most other scientists would have seen this and made a mad dash for the nearest exit, Moira knew. She also knew that if she tried to run, Jack Morrison wouldn't stop until she laid in a pool of her own blood. But like how he was no ordinary intruder, she was no ordinary scientist.

"Don't bother trying to stop them." Moira spoke authoritatively into the speaker.

The nasally guard on the other side sounded dumbstruck. " _What?!_ "

"You needn't worry." she answered, a wicked grin curling into place. "If it eases your little mind, don't think of them as intruders. Order a detachment to my laboratory so our 'guests', can receive a proper welcome."

"Um... yes ma'am?" With that, the other end turned to static.

Moira scoffed. "Such a dullard." she remarked as she returned to one of the counters. "But still, even the lesser ones have their use."

Pressing a button underneath it, a portion of wall not covered by equipment slid away and revealed a hidden closet.

"This is Moira O'Deorain. Experimental log: Supplemental. Test Nine will have to wait." she said into her once-again recovered recorder. "There has been a development that will take precedence for the time being. It appears that a pair of old acquaintances have cried havoc and unleashed the dogs of war upon me."

The veins in her withered arm pulsed with energy as her heart rate sped up and the excitement in her eyes matched the now-returned wicked grin. "My hypothesis? A conclusion in my favour."

She tucked away the recorder and chuckled in vile anticipation; The best thing about her work was that it never ceased to surprise.

* * *

A hand gesture from Jack signaled that the coast was clear and coaxed Angela out of hiding.

"We need to keep moving. There'll be more on their way." he grunted.

The two of them took off down the hallways again, peaking around every corner they took in case another security detail appeared. It required Angela to have nerves of steel and be able to stay as quiet as a pin drop, but that proved to be easier than originally expected. Life and death stakes, she knew, could elicit things from people they normally would have found impossible.

As they neared their destination, another hand gesture stopped the both of them in their tracks. As the rapid thuds of combat boots drew closer, they both pressed themselves up against the wall as straight and still as humanly possible. Angela thought they would just pass by like the last few guards, but this one suddenly came to a stop.

Jack took the opportunity to sneak closer, like a tiger about to ambush its prey. He quickly pointed behind Angela, a signal for him to cover their rear, to which she raised her pistol and readied it. For a moment, she thought she could hear what sounded like one guard talking into an earpiece, with a series of 'yes sir' answers that led her to believe he was taking some kind of order. She was just about to draw closer when the smallest movement, just in the corner of her eye, snatched her attention.

In an instant she had her weapon raised and ready, but the moment proved to be a false alarm upon a longer look. The twitch simply came from another guard down at the far end of the hallway, one that had been dealt with just before the alarm went off and was now settling into rigor mortis. The odd feeling of calm and off-put was quickly replaced as she flinched at the sound of a vicious crack followed by three muffled pulse shots, sounds she knew the source of as soon as she heard them.

"Hurry!" Jack hissed from around the nearest corner, to which Angela obliged. As they set off again, she saw that the guard that had stopped was now dead on the ground, his neck twisted in a mortally impossible manner and three scorched holes marking the shots, two in the chest and one through the head.

Pacifism had long been the ideal that Angela had clung to. For almost twenty years she had voiced her extreme distaste for violence and her condemnations for not finding other ways to solve problems, even if most of the staff seemed to have ignored her. Still, even though those days were long gone, old habits died hard, even after she had forced herself to stop looking at the damn thing.

"You're leaving quite the trail in our wake." she whispered with a hint of glib.

"If you've got a problem with it, the door's back the way we came." Jack snapped in reply.

"I'm fine, but don't you think that someone's going to find those bodies and use them as a breadcrumb trail right to us?"

Jack scoffed darkly, the sound muffled somewhat under his mask. "We already set off the alarm; They know we're here. If anything, it might make Moira come to us."

"Moira's not stupid. If she isn't already making an escape, she'll be waiting for us."

Before she could say more, Jack same to a halt at another intersection before combat rolling to the opposite end. Just to the left of them was the reason why they'd broken into the Oasis university, and it was completely unguarded.

Though she did her best to hide it, a slow double take from Jack let Angela know that the face she was using to hide her feelings needed work.

"You alright?" he asked.

Angela's attention was drawn out of her thoughts. "Yes, yes, I'm alright." she replied through a deep breath. "It's just that... something about this feels wrong."

She didn't expect an answer, nor did she get one. Whatever he was thinking was tightly concealed.

"I mean, think about it." she explained. "None of the patrols ever caught wind of where we were even though there's nowhere to hide in these hallways, and none of them went to guard the only place that we'd ever go to in this university. This feels like a trap."

Whatever his reaction was, if anything, she couldn't see. "What's your game plan then?" he demanded, almost rhetorically.

She immediately saw where he was going and glowered at him for it. "Fine, I'm not a tactical genius, but something here still doesn't seem right."

"You'll feel better once Moira's dead, along with anyone else who stands in our way. Trap or no trap, she's going to pay for what she's done. Now keep your head in the game and cover my six while I breach."

Without another word, Angela complied as Jack readied an explosive charge on the door's lock. Within a few seconds the device had been set and the two flanked the door, ready to enter when it blew in just under a minute.

The seconds felt far longer than they were as concerns made Angela's stomach knot and turn. She looked back up at Jack for an instant, feeling only mildly relieved when it seemed that his steely concentration was still on what lied ahead.

She took in a long breath through her nose and let it out slowly. _This is it_ , she thought. _After this, Reyes' days will be officially numbered. I'll have my research back, I'll have Moira's as well, and I'll have Jack to help give him what he deserves._

Even so, what lied ahead felt secondary to what was in the past. No amount of deep breathing or brusque pep talks had been able to shake the corpse with its neck snapped from her thoughts, nor had the echo of the last words that had been spoken to her.

The hiss of the charge as it neared the detonation point snapped her back into reality. Re-familiarizing herself, she now saw that Jack had turned a shoulder away as so to shield himself from the explosion and followed suit.

Knowing no one could see her face, she briefly rolled her eyes at the daydream she'd just had and scoffed. _What on Earth am I thinking? That witch created Reyes, stole my work, killed my patients, and God knows what else. Of course she needs to die._

And yet, the body was still burned into her memory...

With one final crackle and a puff of sparks, the breaching charge reached the critical moment, blowing the door to fragments and leaving a cloud of smoke in its place. Jack gave her another look as well as an affirming nod, the latter of which she returned before the two of them stepped through the doorway, weapons drawn and guards raised.

* * *

The lights had all been turned out, but the switch for them was right where they expected. Now in full view, the lab proved to be surprisingly large, almost ninety feet long by fifteen wide, with long work stations running on either side of the floor space that Angela and Jack now walked.

"What are we looking for?" Jack asked.

"My datapad. It's got all of my nanobiotic research on it. Combine that with whatever we can get from the databanks in this lab, and I'll be able to get a good start."

"That sounds great, but what does it look like?" Jack said impatiently.

"It's coloured greyish-white, around an inch thick, and it's about the size of an iPad."

"An iPad?" Jack smirked. "And I thought I was old."

Angela quickly shot him a look before going back to the search. After thirty seconds of clearing off the clutter of various scientific machines, Angela found it next to a palm-sized glass container full of a dirty yellow concoction.

At first glance it appeared to hold a sample of her nanobiotics, which on its own was disturbing enough. But as she picked up the datapad and waved it in the air to grab Jack's attention, a faint streak of black swirled inside the glass, grabbing her attention tightly and refusing to let go.

Angela put the datapad aside and crouched down to the desk's level, eyeing the contents of the glass curiously. The black swirl popped up again before disappearing. _Could it be?_ she thought. Her eyes darted around the rest of the desk, looking for some way to test her theory. She found what she wanted in the nearby sink; A Petri dish and an empty syringe, both of which looked freshly used. _Not exactly sterile, but it will have to do_.

Before she could begin her experiment, Jack turned up beside her. "The room's empty; Moira's long gone. She must have booked it out of here once the alarm went off. We need to leave now if we're going to pick up her trail."

"We may not need to find her." Angela replied.

Jack's grip on his rifle tightened in agitation. "What are you talking about?"

She looked up at him with a glint in her eyes. "I'll show you."

As Jack looked on, she unlatched the vial of Ghost Serum from her belt, unscrewed the top, and poured a few drops into the Petri dish. As the black fluid began to evaporate, she plunged the needle into the glass of yellow liquid and drew out a sample.

She turned back towards Jack. "Now, if my hypothesis is cor-"

Jack suddenly grabbed her hand, interrupting her train of thought. "How is this important enough to potentially make us lose our target?" he growled angrily.

A glare and a swift wrench freed her from his grip as she continued with her experiment. "Everything you see here was recently used. I think she was on to something." she explained as she turned back towards the counter. "Now as I was saying, if my hypothesis is correct..."

She emptied the needle into the dish and stood back to behold the results, looking over her shoulder as the two solutions mixed at once and solidified into black peaks; As surprised as she was, she could tell even under his mask that Jack was completely astounded.

"This... th-this could..." was all he could get out between a wheezy laugh and a series of deep breaths to keep himself from both screaming and crying. He placed one hand on his temple and let his rifle slump down to the ground as he practically fell onto one knee.

"Theoretically." Angela replied. "We'll still need my datapad and her own research, but yes." She helped the overcome Jack back onto his feet. "This could kill Reyes."

" _Indeed._ "

The voice echoed through the room, shattering their elation and raising their guard. Jack and Angela formed up back to back, covering the entire room with their eyes and their weapons, but the voice's owner was nowhere to be seen. Angela had recognized it immediately, and it meant one thing: Moira was still in the lab.

"Where are you?!" Jack called out. "What's the matter?! Too scared to face us?"

Just then, a panel in the wall thirty feet from where they stood slid open and a dark purple tendril shot forth, making impact with Jack and sapping his strength. Angela spun around and watched as he collapsed to the ground before she knelt down beside him. A quick check-over confirmed he was still alive, but only just. She watched as Moira stepped out of the hidden room, now wearing a black protective suit with tubes on her back and arms that pumped Ghost Serum and nanobiotics into devices strapped to the palms of her hands. At the same time, a squad of guards charged in through the entrance and trained their sights on the doctor.

Moira strode up to her downed quarry and smiled with haughty derision. "As I said when we last met," she gloated. "Nanobiotics have endless potential."


	9. Chapter 9: Proposition

Moira crouched down to look Angela in the eye as she tended to Jack. "I'm disappointed that you didn't suspect a trap." the Talon scientist remarked with overtones of condescension. "I had no doubt Morrison would charge in headlong, but I thought you were smarter than that."

Angela's look shot back venomous contempt. "You weren't being very subtle about it."

"And he simply didn't listen? It seems that he hasn't changed at all."

"Neither have you." Angela spat viciously. "You weaponized my work!"

"I expanded the horizon." the Irishwoman replied as she stood up, a calm voice and derisive eyes concealing her anger at the accusation leveled. "As I once said, opportunities such as these simply can't be passed over if progress is to be made."

"Opportunities like _murdering_ _my entire clinic!?_ " Angela's voice had grown almost hysterical with rage, to which the surrounding guards all closed the distance slightly. "What did Reyes promise you? Money? Revenge?"

Moira turned around and laughed through a sick smile. "You surprise me, doctor. You come into my office with the intention to steal my work and presumably murder me as well, and yet you're still so naive that you can't deduce my motives."

Before Angela could reply, she was knocked onto her back by a swift kick to the head, coming from one of the guards at Moira's gestured behest. As she picked herself up, the geneticist stood over her, looking down with snide disdain. "The answer, my dear, is much less petty."

At the behest of another gesture, two guards grabbed Angela by the arms and forced her onto her feet. Moira noticed that as the doctor was pulled up, she flinched as Jack's head, previously cradled in her lap, fell back onto the floor. Normally, she wouldn't have cared about this, but what she had in mind to say required Angela's full attention, something she couldn't give if she was distracted by the death of her colleague. In as little time as it took to snap her fingers, a spritz of golden nanobiotics drew forth from the tubes on her untainted hand onto Jack. To Angela, it seemed like barely enough to do anything, let alone keep him alive.

She went to tend to him, but she was stopped by Moira as she cupped the doctor's chin with her withered hand and leaned in close. Angela tried to look away, if only to avoid the piercing gaze from that unnerving red eye and the frozen touch of her blackened fingers, but Moira's grip was unyielding.

"That's a nasty scar." the geneticist said as she ran a long, sharp fingernail along Angela's cheek. "I can help you heal it, if you so choose."

"It's fine." Angela replied reflexively.

"Oh, but I think it isn't." Moira's nails dug into the scar, leaving trickles of blood in their wake. "Otherwise you wouldn't be here."

"What's your point?"

Moira's condescension disappeared, replaced by a glint in her eyes and a smile to match. She gestured for the guards to let go of the doctor so she could stand on her own two feet, which they did promptly despite keeping their guns trained. "My point is that I've noticed that we are quite alike despite our, shall we say... 'rivalry'." She let go of Angela's face and stood back a foot. "We are two sides of the same proverbial coin. On one end we have your idealism," she said as she held up a glowing yellow sphere of energy in one hand and an inky black orb in the other. "and at the other, my ambition. We both desire to change the world, but our methods and motives are where we've differed."

"Tell me something I don't know." Angela said with an overtone of dark sarcasm as she wiped away the blood streaming down her face.

Moira couldn't help but laugh as the visual aids to her explanation shrunk away into nothing. "Very well then." she answered as a smile curled across her lips. "What if I told you that I too have no love for Reyes?"

Angela only betrayed her surprise for a moment before it was covered up by angry disbelief. "That's hard to believe. You both eat out of Talon's hand."

"I serve the pursuit of knowledge, first and foremost." Moira replied, her voice even more frigid as she suppressed the offense she felt. She did an about-face on her heel and began slowly pacing back and forth. "I once considered the Ghost Serum and its effects on Reyes to be my greatest experiment, a test as to whether immortality could be unlocked through tweaking genetic code." she explained, pride evident in her voice and body language, before the former suddenly lowered to a whisper. "But even Shakespeare can grow tiresome if you read it too many times. Reyes once struck me as a man like Richard III: Powerful, ambitious, and uncaring for society's inhibitions. But whereas he was a respected colleague, that persona he's taken on, the 'Reaper', has become tedious and repetitive." She about-faced back towards Angela and pointed at her with a black finger. "That, is where you come in."

Angela glared back, but didn't retort.

"You and I are at the forefront of two fields of science with endless potential." Moira continued, her tone becoming increasingly hinted with determination. "After doing Reyes his favour at your clinic, I discovered a new opportunity. We've been long past making the blind see or the crippled walk, but now we're even past creating immortality. After all, if we create something, we should know how to destroy it."

At first, following the geneticist's train of thought seemed difficult to follow, but before long it became all too clear and it left her incredulous. "Are you... asking if you can help us?"

"I'm asking if you can help _me_." Moira circled around behind as she elaborated further. "I'm proud to see that today's events prove that great minds think alike. There's still a great deal of work to do, and we'll need both of our notes to complete it." She stopped in front of Angela and lightly clasped her hands together. "You'll be free to go if you just want to kill him, but I urge you to consider what possibilities await, now that you're no longer afraid of spilling blood."

For the first time since their rapport had begun, Angela wasn't expressing anger, at least not visibly. Internally, though, her mind was racing: _Is she telling the truth? Does she really want to kill Reyes just because she thinks he's boring?_ As these questions and more repeated themselves, so did an internal dialogue that wrestled for control.

 _-She's already started what you want to do and she has the same goals. She can help you, and if she turns against you, you and Jack will kill her too._

 _-No. Don't forget she was the one who created the Ghost Serum, who used it to destroy your life's work. Reyes will die, but involving her will only lead to more pain and suffering._

 _-We have a common enemy._

 _-She's just as much a monster as him!_

 _-Then she'll die too!_

 _-Remember what Ana said: When does it end?_

She stood silently in place for some time until Moira came around in front of her and once again held her chin in her black hand. "That's a nasty scar." she repeated, even calmer than before. "I can help you heal it, if you so choose."

 _-Remember what you told Ana: It ends when they're dead and you can sleep again._

 _-'They're' is plural. Reyes is one person._

"I require an answer." Moira said, gripping Angela's chin tighter. The icy feeling of her blackened hand spread across the doctor's face, finally tearing her away from her contemplation. It felt as though her touch was drawing the very air from her lungs. Her scar flared up with a blistering pain as her breath grew desperate. Her tormentor seemed to notice this, as she finally relinquished her hold and let Angela fall to the ground before turning away once again.

For five seconds, as she fell to her knees and forearms gasping for breath, she just about blacked out next to where Jack still lay. In that time, as her sight turned dark and she struggled to keep herself from spiraling to unconsciousness, her oxygen-deprived mind waded through what she had experienced. Sights, feelings, sounds, all of it as though it were flashing before her at the speed of light, yet also meshed together in a murky haze. There was what felt like death itself, radiating from Moira's touch.

The sound of a neck snapping as the body it belonged to crumbled to the floor...

The sights of that same body splayed out terribly and the up-close view she'd just had of the veins of that wretched hand, two memories that had suddenly become inseparable...

The combination almost made her vomit, but again she was peeled away from it by Moira. "Well?" the geneticist pried as she offered to help her back to her feet.

Angela went absent-mindedly to take the hand offered, but stopped herself when she realized that she was enveloped in a cold sweat. The debate she had had with conscience was replaced with a simple, resounding word: _No._

She got back up by herself, stood eye to eye with her enemy, and spat in her face.

Moira at first simply backed away, briefly taken aback but keeping herself collected, at least externally. "That was... disappointing." she said nonchalantly as she wiped her face clean before punching Angela square in the gut without warning, almost sending her to her knees again.

Angela doubled over and clutched her stomach in pain as she sputtered for breath. No sooner had she recollected herself when the guards, at the snap of the geneticist's fingers, readied their weapons with lethal intent. _'You'll be free to go if seeing him dead is all you desire'. Yeah, right._

"Remember when I said that killing your patients wasn't out of revenge?" Moira inquired, her face twisted with malice and her sickly hand clenched in a tight fist.

Angela didn't answer. No sooner had the wind returned to her lungs, and now she was trying to fight down hyperventilation as any fleeting ideas of how to not be gunned down in the next ten seconds turned up completely blank, especially since Jack was still only just clinging to life.

"Just so we're clear," Moira continued through a wicked laugh as she backed away and letting the guards circle around front. "this most certainly is."

The geneticist expected to next hear the sound of triggers being pulled and bullets finding their marks at ranges where they couldn't miss, but instead, a small click was what sounded off. In the near-total silence that had befallen the lab, it seemed as loud as a bomb exploding.

She wasn't wrong.

Angela was just as surprised when she heard it as well, and it seemed to have come from right where she was standing. Quickly looking down, she saw that Jack, with whatever life he still had left, had dropped a live grenade in front of them. At the same time that she saw it, so did the guards, who immediately scattered for what little cover there was in the lab.

With only seconds to react, adrenaline-fueled instinct drove Angela's actions. She hoisted Jack over her shoulder, no small feat since he was almost twice her weight, and made for the door with all possible haste. Looking behind her, she watched Moira disappear in a cloud of black smoke literally just as the grenade detonated.

It was the last thing she saw before everything went dark.


	10. Chapter 10: Revenge

When Angela came to, everything had gone completely, blindingly white. Her sense of direction and perspective were gone, and she felt like she was floating in and out of existence, like what Tracer had described before her chronal accelerator was invented. When her sense of reality and her vision finally returned, she discovered she was face-first on the floor. Her entire body ached as though it had just been flattened by a steamroller, and even though she could now see, people and things looked more like abstract shapes and blurry outlines than anything else. Her ears were ringing, though she could just make out the muffled screams of several of the guards and the distinct crackle of an open flame.

Gathering her strength, she lifted her chest off the ground with her forearms and made every effort to take in breath, though each inhale and exhale only intensified the feeling of being physically crushed tenfold. With her blood pumping again she craned her neck upward as her vision began to refocus, looking around at the carnage that had just been wrought.

First and foremost she checked on Jack: He was on his side next to her, still hanging on to the last vestiges of life. It was a sight that prompted a feeling of mild incredulity. _You always did manage to survive,_ she thought.

The rest of the lab was like a war zone. The immediate vicinity was shredded, the pristine white flooring and expensive machinery reduced to scorch marks. On the work stations, various chemicals and concoctions had ignited and sprayed fire across the room that threatened to spread to everything and everyone left inside. Next to ground zero two of the guards lay dead, while another three were screaming in agony as the flames overtook them, and another three were slowly recovering from being laid out just like she had.

Despite the destruction and the hurt, Angela knew she and Jack had to be the first ones back up on their feet. Getting onto her knees, she crawled gingerly over to him and took a small cylindrical device off his belt. When she placed it on the ground, panels on the sides opened up and a golden aura spread its energy to the two of them. Within a few seconds, a pained grunt as he got back onto his feet indicated he was back in decent condition.

"Took you long enough." he chastised as he tapped a panel on the side of his visor.

The impatience prompted a sardonic reply. "Sorry, but I'm sure you know how distracting being held at gunpoint can be."

"Not to mention that you and Moira were having a pretty friendly conversation."

"There was nothing friendly about it. Besides, what was I supposed to do? Lash out and get myself killed?"

"No." Jack answered as he picked up his rifle. "What you're supposed to do is-"

He was cut off mid-sentence by bullets whistling past their heads. Seeing that the surviving henchmen were back on their feet, Angela and Jack raised their own weapons and returned fire, the ensuing calamity sending all persons involved dashing for whatever cover hadn't been immolated. A burst of pulse bullets from Jack dropped one of the attackers, but the other two's concentrated efforts prevented him from getting a bead on them before having to duck behind a pile of twisted metal.

"Cover me! I'm moving up!" the former Strike Commander barked as he leaped over his concealment and charged in. Angela, from her position, obliged by suppressing their opponents until Jack had taken up another spot and could resume the skirmish for himself.

But as quickly as the tide turned in their favour, it moved against them.

Out of the corner of her eye, Angela saw Moira reappear from her cloud of black smoke and close in on Jack from behind, apparently either not seeing or just ignoring her entirely. She leveled her weapon at the geneticist, but a stray bullet made her flinch before she could take the shot. With no time to aim again, all she could do was shout "Behind you!"

For a moment, the firefight ceased as the three men in the room looked up to see a torrent of gold and black energy hurtled their way, unleashed from the tubes on Moira's arms. Jack was able to combat roll out of its path just in time, but the two guards were nearly disintegrated where they stood.

Before she could draw a bead on her fleeing prey, a shot from Angela's pistol ricocheted off of the apparatus on her back. She spun on her heel and directed her attack at the doctor, igniting a pool of chemicals in a conflagration that engulfed even more of the office and sent the doctor tumbling across the floor. Before she could finish off her old rival though, her attention was grabbed by an enraged scream as Jack charged her down and took a swing at her with the butt of his rifle, forcing her to duck and let up her assault.

* * *

"Where's Reyes?!" he demanded as he swung at her again.

"I see you've finally grown a backbone." she replied, her speech cold even now.

Jack doubled his efforts, firing at her from point-blank range when he wasn't trying to club her down. In spite of his experienced but feral assault, however, Moira proved to be more adept hand-to-hand than he surmised, as she dodged his blows before sweeping his legs out. Jack was quick to rebound, as a well-aimed kick forced the geneticist to back off, allowing him to get back on his feet and land a hard blow before she could counter. She too, however, recovered swiftly, and soon their fight had devolved into a frenzied grapple.

"You need to pay for what you've done!" he roared.

Moira chuckled wickedly. "I know." With that, she pulled back the strength she had been using to keep her opponent at bay, causing him to stumble forward and nearly fall into the inferno. "And it was all possible because of you."

He let loose a volley of pulse rounds as he regained his footing, but she vanished before they could find their mark and coalesced behind a seemingly impenetrable wall of flames. "Think about it: you could have cut off the head of the snake any time you wanted," she said as she paced on the other side of the fiery barrier. "but you didn't want to face the truth, did you?"

"Shut up!" Jack yelled. His visor glowed a deeper shade of red as he fired again, but it was still to no affect.

"It hurts, doesn't it?" she taunted, cruelly savouring how incensed she was making him. "No matter how obvious it became, the nostalgia you clung to was too important." Over the fire's crackling, she could hear Jack's muffled breathing grow louder and see one of his hands drop to his side and curl into a tight fist.

"It's pathetic, really." she continued. "You, the farm boy who refused to see his best friend for who he really was, are no less responsible for Overwatch's downfall. Every corpse left behind, every life ruined, is just as much your doing as it is his or mine or Angela's. All because you couldn't do what needed to be done." She laughed as she turned around, letting her guard down in the belief that she was safe. "So tell me something, Morrison." she taunted. "How does that make you feel?"

When she looked behind her for a response, she discovered that the flames shielding her were not so unbreakable: There was barely a moment's notice before Jack barreled through it like nothing and delivered a flurry of ferocious hits, the last of which sent her spiraling face first onto a flat metal apparatus, rendered white-hot by the blaze. Though she only made contact with the object for a brief instant, the searing heat made her scream as she fell flat on the floor, her face obscured.

He closed in slowly, predator-like, as he brushed a few sparkling embers off his jacket and loaded a fresh magazine into his weapon. "You're right. It hurts." he snarled. "Every day since Venice that I've let you and him live, it hurts." He tapped against the side of his visor, which projected a display that locked her into his sights; She wasn't going to evade him again. "But I know how to make it right."

The effort she made to clamber onto her knees was was immense. She looked up at Jack, revealing a horrific burn that running just under her red eye from nose to ear. Her gritted, pointed teeth could be seen through the scorched tissue of which what hadn't been burned to a crisp now oozed a vile blend of Ghost Serum and blood.

"It's far too late for that." she hissed.

Though Jack was fast on the trigger, she was faster still, extending out her black hand and summoning a stream of energy that once again left him writhing on the floor. This time, she knew as she stood back up, she would not let him go nearly as fast or as painlessly as she did before. She made a mental note to record her findings, but that was for later.

For now, he was going to suffer, and she was going to enjoy it.

* * *

When consciousness returned to Angela, the first thing she heard was Jack's screams.

In an instant she was back to a full state of alert, even though her body still hurt like hell. As she hoisted herself up using the edge of the counter, a pinprick in the hand let her know that the needle from earlier, still filled with the altered concoction, was untouched by some miracle. Her attention, however, was quickly brought back over to her companion, as Moira forcibly and excruciatingly extracted the life out of him with the tubes that ran along her tainted hand.

Angela drew her pistol and took aim, but getting a clean shot proved impossible; Her vision was in a dangerous state of blurriness and her target's vital parts were blocked by the apparatus she wore. Her heart and her mind moved at the speed of an onrushing train as she hurriedly considered any other way to intervene, but Jack's howls broke through her thoughts and erased any solutions, leaving her helpless to watch as the Ghost Serum and the person who stole her work to create it claimed another victim.

It was then, even over the heat of the flames and the piercing sounds of Jack's sadistically drawn-out demise, that it came to her.

She cursed herself under her breath for not making the connection earlier. The same formula that coursed through Moira's contraption and allowed her to torture Jack was the same as what gave her sickly arm its attributes. This, she knew, would provide her with one last chance.

Invigorated by this sudden inspiration and the rush of adrenaline that followed, Angela grabbed the syringe tightly and rushed to where she needed to be with all possible haste, braving the still-rising flames and coughing down the smoke that lingered in the air. With Moira too preoccupied to see her coming, she plunged the needle and its contents into the black veins that crisscrossed under the tubes with every last bit of strength she could conjure.

Moira herself took notice of this immediately and paused her torture to throw Angela aside with a backhand, but no sooner had she made impact when she was crippled with an agonizing sensation. She looked down in growing terror as her arm turned the colour and texture of glass, the veins on it draining of their pitch-dark colour and leaving behind a feeling so painful that it stole the cry off her tongue.

"What did you do?" she asked hoarsely, still staring over her arm. She answered her own question though, when she discovered the needle still deeply embedded, a trickle of the formula rolling down the end as she pulled it out. A look rolled across her face that combined surprise, amusement, and fear into one.

She went to say something, but was cut short when the crack of a gun rang out. Before she could react, a pulse bullet burrowed through her gut and came out the other side. Both her and Angela looked to where the sound had come from to see Jack, still on the floor but now lying prone with his rifle tightly in hand.

Clutching the wound with her one good hand and seeing blood trickle through her fingers, she couldn't help but laugh. The events of the past several minutes had been almost surreal in nature from start to finish. It wasn't as though she hadn't learned anything from this experience, but the price she paid for it was high, and as such she reasoned that it was time to vanish out of harm's way, lick her wounds, and learn and prepare for next time.

The one problem: When she tried to vanish, she couldn't.

The laughter died on her face as the consequences became apparent; Her power was gone, drained by the same thing that had given it to her. Another shot found its mark in her chest, then another and another and another still. By the time Jack loosened his grip on the trigger, ten rounds had perforated the geneticist's body and gone through her back, shattering the canisters of her device from the inside and spilling out everything within onto the growing blaze.

Even though she still stood, her gait was staggered and her breathing ragged as she moved towards him. She raised her arm to finish him off for good, but one last shot found its mark, shattering it into a thousand tiny fragments and sending her tumbling onto her back. Where there would normally have been fountains of blood gushing out, a faint outline of her arm made by the Ghost Serum dissipated into the air with an eerie hiss. Behind her as she fell, Jack saw Angela standing up and holding her Cadeuceus pistol, the stubby barrel smoking as she hurried over to him.

"Can you stand?" she asked, holding out her hand to assist him back onto his feet.

Jack brushed her offer aside, grunting heavily as he pushed himself up with his rifle. "Yeah," he replied. "I can stand." No sooner had he said that when he nearly stumbled over himself before Angela caught him. Once he regained his balance, he pushed her away again. "We need to get out of here before this places burns to the ground."

"Not without Moira's notes. I still have my datapad, but she's probably got her own findings on the lab's computer." She produced a finger-sized holo-drive and placed it in his palm. "Hopefully, it'll still be in good enough condition that you can download whatever she's got."

Jack pointed over Angela's shoulder, drawing her attention to Moira as she moaned in pain. "What about her?"

"I'll take care of her. Just get what we need. I don't know how much time we have left."

As Jack went to collect the data, Angela readied her pistol. Now it was her turn to do something out of revenge.


	11. Chapter 11: What Needs To Be Done

Moira drooped her head back, letting herself feel the blaze as it singed her short auburn hair, while also letting the heat fill her chest and help her summon the strength to move. The feeling of the licks of a growing inferno would have had most others crying in fear and pain by this point, doing everything they could to not let it roast them alive. This simply wasn't so for her; It was too late for such fear, and pain was no stranger. It was no friend, but it wasn't unfamiliar.

She recalled vividly the day she had scheduled human testing to begin on what was then her latest achievement, how she had forgone the usual subjects in favour of herself, and how she had shrieked like a banshee as the Ghost Serum slithered into her veins and warped her arm into the testament to her genius it was. That is, she came to grips with, until less than a minute ago.

Still, she realized as she finally rolled herself onto her stomach with a dull thud and an anguished groan, that was nothing compared to what pulsated through her body now. What she felt radiating from the mangled stump on her shoulder was beyond any adjective she could think of, any technique she could use to quell it, and even the adrenaline rushing through the rest of her muscles as part of the age-old human survival instinct. She tried to put that burst of vitality to good use by lifting herself off the ground, though with only one arm the effort only led to her collapse, burying her face in a puddle of blood, serum, and the tears that trickled down and stung her raw, burned skin. Her bullet-riddled chest, another contributor to her pain, flared up with even the smallest twitch, making any more attempts to get back up highly unlikely.

 _Funny_ , she thought. _I've_ _spent the best years of my life unlocking the secret to living forever, and yet I'll probably die not only because of what I discovered, but because of that_ _pacifist bitch_. She drew out a long, shallow breath that left behind the feeling of blood gargling in her mouth. _I guess such ironies simply aren't conceivable until it's too late._

The sound of footsteps drew her out of her contemplation. Straining her eyes upward, she could see Angela walking up to her, pistol in hand and pointing down at her enemy. But though her actions showed conviction, Moira could make out in her eyes the same emotions that gripped herself: Fear, anger, uncertainty.

A lightbulb went off in her head: There was still one last thing she could do. At the same time, a few verses of a favourite poem recited themselves.

 _Though wise men at their end know dark is right,_

 _Because their words had forked no lightning they_

 _Do not go gentle into that good night._

 _Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray._

"'Do not go gentle into that good night.'" she murmured. "'Rage, rage against the dying of the light.'"

"What did you say?" Angela asked, cautiously inquisitive.

"Nothing of consequence."

"I know poetry when I hear it. Now get up on your knees."

Moira bit her lip as she forced herself up, hoping that it would refocus the pain in some sort of way; To her dismay, it didn't. When she had adopted the position, her posture was wide open and she cocked her head to one side.

The view Angela was given made her eyes widen in shock. The destruction of Moira's arm had left a grisly stump where the shoulder began, one that leaked Ghost Serum that mixed in with the occasional spurt of blood. Her chest also dripped crimson fluid from the holes that now aerated her torso, and her previously slicked-back hair had been partially burned off, leaving small bald patches behind and a rank smell in the air.

She smiled, bringing her mutilated face in full view. "You should know how proud I am of you, my dear." she said. "So many years of being so predictable and now here you are. I suppose all it took was..." She paused briefly and grimaced as she clutched her shoulder. "...the right motivation."

Angela didn't know what unnerved her more: The injuries or the compliment. Still, she kept her look stony and the grip on her weapon tight. "I did what I had to. 'If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not seek revenge?'"

Moira broke into laughter, which itself turned quickly into a hacking cough that spewed more blood onto the floor. "The Merchant of Venice." she said as she wiped it off her lips. "You're just full of surprises today."

For a few moments there was silence as the two stared each other down in anticipation of the other's next move. The air crackled just as much with tension as it did the still-raging blaze.

"So, now what?" Moira finally ended the moment with. "Do you expect me to beg, to plead and bargain for my life?" Her speech adopted a mocking tone. "'A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!'"

"No." Angela snapped, cold as ice. She stepped closer and braved looking her enemy in the eye as she reached for her pocket, retrieving Moira's recorder. "Jack's getting the rest right now. After we leave, you're going to my clinic to get patched up. Then, we'll make sure the world knows about every evil thing you've ever done."

"You're going to lock me up and throw away the key, aren't you?"

Angela stiffened her hands and brought her pistol to only a few inches away from Moira's head. "You will _never_ hurt anyone ever again." she snarled.

Moira slowly closed her eyes and pursed her lips, taking in as deep a breath as she still could and letting it out. She looked back up, shaking her head in disappointment as she opened her eyes again and saw Angela giving her a suspicious look.

"You've come so far," she said. "and yet you still haven't changed."

"What are you talking about?"

"You couldn't have believed that this was my only laboratory." Moira laughed sickly. "Losing this one is meaningless. Speaking of which, where do you intend for my trial to take place, hmm? Surely you won't want me to stand before my fellow Ministers, so where do you plan on extraditing me to?"

"That doesn't matter. You _will_ face justice."

"Maybe you're right, but 'justice', as you define it, is impermanent. No matter the place, if you have me thrown in a cell I'll be released in less than a week." Her smile turned to a grin that bared her blood-stained teeth. "Fortunately for you, there is a much more... immutable solution."

For a brief period, Angela pondered what had been said, but whatever speculation she had was shattered by cold, terrible truth when she saw Moira leaning forward and letting the barrel of the Cadeuceus Pistol press against her forehead.

Angela forced down her emotions and spoke resolutely. "No. I'm not a murderer."

"Look at me. I won't survive the trip to your clinic." She winced as she clutched her shoulder and coughed up a glob of inky black serum that vapourized the instant it hit the ground. "Killing me now would be an act of mercy."

Angela began raise her weapon out of harm's way, but was stopped as Moira grabbed her hands and yanked them back down with unnatural force. She tried to let go of the gun, but her grip was forcibly clenched shut.

"I'm _not_ a murderer." Angela repeated, though her voice was shakier than she'd intended.

Moira now spoke in a clearer tone that exuded a subtle menace. "If you let me live, nothing changes. Once I'm exonerated, I'll simply go to my other laboratories, continue my research, and start all over again." When she felt Angela's hands begin to tremble, she pressed the advantage. "Everything you've done today will have been a complete waste of time. That is, unless..."

" _I'm not a murderer_!" Angela shouted. As she forced down the tears that had welled up in her eyes, she was finally able to free her weapon and lax her aim. "I'll find another way. There's always another way."

"Who are you trying to convince? Yourself?" Moira replied slyly. "If that really is true, then I implore you: What is it?"

Angela wanted to provide the perfect comeback, something that would end this argument for good, but all she was able to do was look down at her own feet in shame as words failed her.

Seeing this, Moira knew her hypothesis was close to being proven correct. She just had to go a little further. The gnarled features on her angular face made the derisive countenance she adopted seem twice as twisted. "Pitiful." she spat. "I'm sure you could find some alternative, but truth be told, I don't think you really want to."

The accusation caught Angela's attention, stirring up a boiling fury within her as she tightened her hands around the pistol again.

"You heard me." the geneticist said smugly. "You don't want to let justice take its course. You just want an excuse to kill that lets you sleep at night."

In the blink of an eye, the barrel was kissing its target's forehead. Moira looked up at Angela again and saw a fire in her tear-soaked eyes, one that wasn't just the reflection of the inferno. "All I want is Reyes." the doctor insisted through a wavering vibrato. "After he's dead, it ends!"

"If you really believe that, then why go to Morrison?"

The sound of bending metal and splintering wood cut off Angela before she could respond. She looked behind and above her to see that the flames now reached the ceiling, and the toll the heat had taken on the structural integrity was finally beginning to show.

Moira noticed this as well and reached again for Moira's grip on her gun, this time making sure her fingers were wrapped around the trigger. "You don't have much time, Doctor Ziegler. Do what needs to be done." She let go and extended her arm to the side, staring at Angela in anticipation of her hypothesis being confirmed.

Angela knew there was no time left to think, but the impulses she felt counteracted each other. On one hand, it felt right; She could put a round through her skull and end her reign of terror forever. On the other, while it felt right, _was_ it right? It and other questions made themselves known in her mind. _Is this what I want? Will this be the end?_

Beads of sweat dripped from her forehead and her hands shook as she grasped the trigger hesitantly. In front of her, Moira appeared to be mouthing out the line of poetry she had recited earlier. Angela closed her eyes and silently prayed to whatever would listen to help her make the right decision.

She opened them again just in time to see Moira's final moment.

The sound of a gunshot permeated like a clap of thunder as the projectile it sent met its target. Angela yelped and flinched as blood sprayed all over her face and her Valkyrie suit. As she wiped away the splatter, she was given a full view as Moira's corpse, marked with an exit wound where her crimson eye had been, keeled over and hit the floor with a muffled thump.

The full gravity of what had just happened, initially dampened by shock, now bore down on her. Moira O'Deorain was dead; The woman whose mad science made the most unspeakable evils possible, could no longer do so for anyone, anymore. Killing her had to be the right thing to do.

Then why, all of a sudden, did she feel so terrible?

Maybe it was the smoke that stung her eyes and lungs, she figured. Alternately, maybe it was the adrenaline rush from the life-and-death scenario wearing off; It would certainly explain the exhaustion that had also manifested. But no, none of those could have overloaded her senses and made her feel like she was going to vomit.

She stowed her pistol away, finally letting her hold go as she ran one hand through her hair. Curiously, it felt wet to the touch even as the raging fires stole the water from the air, so she retracted her hand to see what the cause was.

What she saw let her know exactly why she felt so sick: Her hands, both of them, were coloured deep red and pitch black from the two substances that had leaked from their source, and the outline of Angela's gun was imprinted on her palms from the vice grip she had had on it. Looking down instinctively to get it out of her sight only added to her disgust, as she got a full view of the late Moira's splayed limbs twitching as she settled into rigor mortis. She reached absent-mindedly for what should have been the resurrecting power of her staff, but her hand turning up empty provided one last shock and one last hard truth.

The mad scientist was right. She had changed.

Her thoughts were brought back to ground when Jack wheeled her around with one hand on her shoulder and the other propping up his smoking rifle. "I got what you wanted." he said, showing her the holo-drive. "We need to go, _now_."

The sudden drop of a crumbling beam from the ceiling on top of where Moira lay was enough to prompt a wordless agreement from Angela, but it didn't stop her from looking back as she followed Jack out the door. Behind her, the flames had finally consumed the entire lab from top to bottom, and from the beam had spread embers that now immolated the geneticist. To Angela, it looked like a funeral pyre, taking everything Moira O' Deorain had ever had down with her into oblivion.

* * *

The sprint the two made through the corridors towards safety was thankfully unchallenged, but it wasn't until they were well away from the university that Jack allowed her to stop and catch her breath. She collapsed to the ground and placed a hand over her chest, feeling her heart pound like it was trying to go through her ribs. Her eyes were heavy and bloodshot, and when she rubbed them the grime and dried fluids on her hands only made them feel worse. Jack, though his jacket was marked with burns, appeared no worse for wear as he stared down the sights of his rifle, making sure no one had followed them. Once he confirmed they were alone, he looked back over at Angela.

"I thought you said you'd take care of her." he said, even more brusque than usual.

Angela coughed up the last of the smoke in her lungs before she replied. "I was planning on bringing her with us. Back to my clinic."

Seeing Jack taken aback, she was quick to elaborate as she got back up. "Once she was healed, we'd let the authorities know what she's been doing. They'd put her on trial and-"

"And let her be protected by the other Ministers."

"What? No, of course not. We'd take her to another country. We have the evidence: She would have been found guilty."

"With the connection's she's got, we'd be lucky if she was released in over a week." he growled as he walked over to her. "You need to face facts: Moira was right. The only way we were going to stop her was if we killed her, and _you_ ," He pushed her back with an accusatory finger. "nearly threw our chance away when you hesitated."

Her glare pierced through his glowing visor and let him know exactly how she felt. "I was trying to find another way-"

"There isn't one!" he snapped. "But if you've come up with something, then tell me: What is it?!"

Just like before, Angela combed her mind for a proper retort, but all she could draw was blanks as she shifted her gaze down towards her feet. "I didn't sign on to become a murderer." she finally managed to say, in a voice that tried to cover defeated sheepishness with defiance.

Jack's visor turned to a lighter shade as he crouched slightly so he could look Angela in the eye again. "This isn't murder." he whispered, firm but empathetic. "It's necessary. Do you remember when I tried to tell you something back in the lab, about what you're supposed to do in times like these?"

Though she wasn't even close to in the mood for a guessing game, Angela gave an affirming nod.

"What I was trying to say then," the former Strike Commander explained. "is that I expect that you do what needs to be done, no matter what. Everyone we'll be going after is another step closer to getting revenge on Reyes. I don't know if it'll be ten people or a hundred, but what I do know is that we can't afford to let any of them live. It doesn't matter what you think is right: They're the enemy, and the next time you hesitate I may not be there to save you, or the people you care about." He grasped her forearm lightly, attracting her attention back from her feet to him. "Do you understand?"

In the torrent of mixed feelings that intermingled confusingly, Angela was able to find the sense in Jack's words. "Yes." she answered. "Yes, I understand."

He released her arm and stood back up straight, shouldering his rifle as he did so. "Good. Now we need to get moving before someone finds us. We've both got a lot of work to do." With that, he turned around and began running off. Before he could get out of earshot, though, he was stopped by Angela calling from behind.

"Tell me something, Jack." she said, timidly but with the right tone to let him know this was serious.

Jack halted in his tracks and looked over his shoulder. Even from a few meters distance and with his mask on, she could tell he was listening.

"When does it end?"

Jack could see a torrent of emotions on her face and in her heart from where he stood, so he kept his response immediate and to the point. "We're both soldiers now." he said brusquely. "It never ends."

Without another word, he motioned for Angela to follow him as he sprinted towards their next destination.

As she followed after him, Angela rubbed one eye, which still hadn't cleared up from the earlier chaos. She assured herself that it, and everything else, would turn out fine. _He's right_ , she told herself. _Moira had to go, and so does... everyone else. It's true I hesitated, but I won't do it again._

The sights of both Moira's bullet-riddled body and the guard Jack had killed flickered in her memory, but she kept herself focused. _We did what we needed to be_ _done_ , she reassured again. _Killing her was the right thing to do_.

Then why did she still feel so terrible?


	12. Chapter 12: Amends

Pride was easy. Swallowing it was the tricky part.

Back in Nepal, Genji's call to Tracer and Fareeha had been purposefully undetailed; All he'd said was that he had to meet with them in person at Gibraltar as soon as possible, emphasizing just how important what he had to say was and how it couldn't be done justice over a holo-feed. As it turned out, 'soon' meant nearly two weeks, though he figured it did make sense given just how bitter Fareeha looked when she answered his call. Even so, she'd still agreed, which was why he was now sitting in the light blue-tinted light of the hallway just outside the holo-trainer, on the same bench where the terrible news had been broken, waiting for them to show up.

He knew exactly what he was going to say, but every time he rehearsed it under his breath there was still a part of him that hesitated, that told him he was making a mistake. Why this annoying little earwig kept buzzing around his thoughts wasn't a mystery, but getting rid of it was easier said than done.

The cyborg ninja closed his eyes and slowed his breath as he looked inside himself, finding his center and the source of this problem just as Zenyatta had taught him. Memories gradually bubbled up from deep within, ones that led straight to what he had discovered back in Nepal: The root of his uneasiness now and his solution for helping Angela.

All his life, pride had come easy. It was practically a package deal with the playboy charm he had in the old days, a time when the Shimada name commanded respect across Japan. It seemed like a lifetime ago whenever he thought about it; Back then, his only cares were who had the high score on the games in the local arcade, how many pretty girls he could wrap his arms around, and how perfect his skills with a sword were. Who could blame him for feeling proud of himself?

It wasn't as though he'd been left completely uninstructed, however. His father Sojiro had always told him that pride wasn't a sin, but a reflection of the duality of human nature. He never wanted his sons to be ashamed of their pride, but rather to know that it was something that could bring out both the best and worst in people. Most importantly, he'd taught them that knowing when to let the feeling go was an test everyone had to face in their lives, lest it consume them and lead them astray. There was no way to anticipate or prepare for this test, but those who faced it would be would be shown for who they really were, for better or worse, to those they cared most about.

Of course, Genji thought he had better ways to waste his time than listening to his father back then. The world was at his fingertips, and there wasn't a force on Earth that could take it from him. But, as time passed and and life changed in ways he never could have predicted, the meaning of what he'd disregarded became all too clear.

It was pride that brought about Genji's defiance when Hanzo demanded he take a larger role in the clan's affairs.

It was pride, and that feeling of impunity that came with it, that had driven him to accept his brother's challenge.

It was pride that led him to hate the machine he saw in the mirror every day and forget the man whose heart still beat underneath.

And it was pride, or rather the desire to piece it back together and feel invincible again, that led him to join Reyes in Blackwatch and literally carve his way through his own family. Hanzo had taken everything from him and in wanting to pay him back, the younger Shimada brother had turned down a dark and lonely path, one whose bramble-covered, shadow-darkened twists led to nothing except more pain, hate, and bloodlust. The fact that he hadn't realized this until it was almost too late was a constant regret.

But again, like his father told him, pride had a dual nature. Angela had been the first person in Overwatch to recognize that there was more to him than just the whir of metallic joints and an attitude as sharp-edged as his sword. She'd helped him to recognize that he'd let loss twist his pride into rage and self-loathing, even if she didn't entirely know it. She'd given him the support he needed even when he didn't think it was necessary, and in doing so she'd put him on the path towards Zenyatta, who too saw the duality of the so-called foremost of deadly sins. He only wished that he'd realized sooner that the angel was just as human as he was, and that she needed the same things he did when her pride sent her down the same lonely road.

 _But that was then_ , he mentally reminded himself. _Today is a second chance, and I won't waste it_.

Refocused and at peace, Genji unfurled from his meditative stance just in time.

"Lena and Fareeha have arrived. Do you need more time to prepare?" Athena chimed over the intercoms.

As much as his suddenly racing pulse and the feeling of cold sweat on equally cold steel made Genji want to say 'yes', there could be no putting this off. "No, no. Let them in." He looked over his shoulder at the door as he stood up, waiting for it to slide open. "Is it almost finished?"

"Re-construction is almost complete, satellites have narrowed the search radius down to fifty square kilometres and falling, and Winston and I have sent messages to the rest of the team to be here as soon as possible. You should have ample time to get the recordings and head for her location."

He winced as the knots in his stomach tightened when he stood up and headed for the door to await their arrival, sparing a moment to mute the footage that had been playing on loop for some time on the TV. At the same time, Athena spoke up again, concern evident in the artificial purrs of her voice. "Are you sure that your plan will work?"

Genji perked up, caught off guard for a moment. "Did you run the numbers on it?"

"Yes, but, I... I just wanted to hear it from you."

The cyborg ninja, with the benefit of hindsight, could see why the consistently overprotective A.I. wanted to know. However, it didn't take him long to also see why she was worried in this instance. "I don't know." he whispered after a period of contemplation. "But that's a chance I have to take."

She didn't answer right away; Genji figured she was processing his response and using it to determine the probability.  
"She'd do the same for all of you." she said. "She _has_ done the same for all of you."

Genji removed his faceplate as he turned back towards the door. "That's why I have to take this chance."

"Make it work." A hint of desperation marked her synthesized words. "Based on what we know, I can't calculate what will happen if it doesn't."

"I can't 'make' anything."

Just then, the door slid open with a whoosh and Fareeha and Tracer walked in. The latter grinned when she saw him waiting, while the former slowed her pace and crossed her arms, eyeing him with a scowl.

As Genji turned back to face the new arrivals, the last part of his response came out as a whisper. "Not this time."

He offered a handshake as he came face-to-face with Tracer, but she took the opportunity to yank him in for a hug. When he pried himself free and made the same offer to Fareeha, she obliged, but with a vice-like grip and an evil eye that cut through him like a scythe through wheat.

"Emily wanted me to say 'hi' for her." Tracer piped up. "After I told her what happened back in Oasis, she was really worried about you and Angela. She always thought you two were a cute couple."

Genji was briefly thankful for the piece of metal that covered most of what was left of his face, otherwise they would have seen him turn beet-red.

"You holding up all right?" she asked, seeing the look of flattered sheepishness in his eyes give way to doubt and remorse for a split second.

"Better now than before." he answered softly. "But there's still a ways to go."

Tracer's happy grin in response helped to set his nerves to rest, though looking back over at Fareeha in hopes of similar reassurance proved to be counter-intuitive as she readjusted the collar of her leather jacket.

 _It's time_ , he thought to himself. _Time to take the first step_.

Before he could collect his thoughts and begin his explanation, Tracer peered over his shoulder curiously. "What's on the TV?" she asked.

Genji turned around to where Tracer was looking, smiling as he realized he'd almost forgotten that it was still on. "It's not much, really." he explained while leading them over. "Just some old archive reels; It's been on the whole time. I think Athena put it on when she saw I was feeling a little nervous."

As he took the remote and the volume crescendo'ed back to normal, Tracer and Fareeha saw what he'd been watching: A collage of fateful instants, times when Overwatch had been fighting the good fight - and losing. From the day the United Nations had commissioned the program, the motley crew of soldiers and scientists, outcasts and misfits, and heroes and adventurers had stood valiantly against foes no one else could have hoped to beat. Through skill, teamwork, and perhaps a little bit of luck, they'd done the impossible more times than they could even remember.

Still, in the end they were all human. Simulation after simulation; recording after recording; Paraguay, Egypt, Prague, or King's Row, the song remained the same: A lucky shot one time, a simple mistake another, and a noble sacrifice to save others still more. Every time it ended with someone that the three people watching called a dear friend, or even they themselves, meeting their demise.

And every time, in came their angel.

On iridescent wings and clad in her pristine white Valkyrie suit, Angela would descend from the skies unto the carnage, met with heads turned high and cheers fueled by revived hope, and cheat death with the wave of her staff. Though the casualties could become mountainous, she met it with single-minded gusto, only slowing down to usher a young child she'd pulled out of a collapsed building to the safety of her mother's arms or to deliver a brief chastising of a teammate's recklessness and her heartfelt reassurance that everything would be alright. If an opponent got too close or she flew into a zone too hot, she'd do only as much as she needed to to defend herself before taking back off into the fracas and doing it all over again.

Tracer, Genji, Fareeha, and everyone else the battle medic was close to already knew without having to see the brief glimpses of her triumphantly resolute face in among the chaos that this was her element. It was why she'd joined her adopted family in the field practically the day she'd gotten her medical doctorate; With the nanobiotics at her command, her actions gave her pride and the world made sense. Power over life and death was at her fingertips, and there wasn't a force on Earth that could take it from her.

And yet, for all the angel's power and pride, she was just as human as the rest of them.

When the dust would settle and the team would head home, there was always something. It couldn't be found on on any archival footage, but didn't need to be for its existence to be known or for it to take its toll. Sometimes it was loud, like an objection during the mission briefing or a note describing her distaste in the R&D division's latest prototype weapon report. Just as often it was more subtle, like the lights on in her laboratory in the all hours of the night or when they'd would head back to the dropship from the battlefield, she'd stoically tell them she'd catch up as her eyes locked in the direction of a piece of a pile of wreckage or a smoldering crater where a bystander had been seen earlier. For years they'd all watched the anger build, the pain intensify, and the pride grow until she'd essentially cut herself off from Overwatch. By the end, she'd quit the team in all but formality.

Tracer looked to her left and right, noticing that her two friends had looks on their faces that made it clear what they were viewing was like rubbing salt into an open wound. Fareeha's fingers tapped on her crossed arms and her eyes drifted between the floor and the TV, though she did fire off a glare at the cyborg ninja. He, meanwhile, appeared to want to shield himself by turning his back to her, but that he made himself stay in place seemed like he wanted to face the music. Though his gaze was bent downward as well, the two still made eye contact, the daggers Fareeha shot being met with a peculiar blend of guilt-inducing accusation and shame.

Eager to improve the crackling tension, Tracer put on a cheery smile as she grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. "Y'know, Genji, it looked like you were going to say something before I cut in." she said. "Sorry about that, by the way."

It took a moment for what she was saying to register, but quick as a flash he remembered what it was she was referring to. "Oh. Oh, yes, it's alright. I just..."

Spitting it out was proving to be much harder than he'd planned, especially with Fareeha still sending her silent contempt his way. He closed his eyes and looked inward again. _It's now or never_.

"I... I wanted to tell you why you're here." he finally uttered. "I want to try again."

"With what?" Fareeha blurted out to the surprise of her cohorts. "Try again with what?"

Both of them could see she was clearly expecting a specific answer, though her question told Genji that she wanted to hear it from him. Tracer shot a silent but stern admonishment her way, but it did little to defuse things.

The cyborg felt like he was walking into a loaded gun's line of fire. For a split second he wanted to retaliate with equal venom, but he reminded himself of the consequences before he could. He was at a low point, and saying the wrong thing would only make the hole deeper.

"With Angela."

Immediately, Fareeha exhaled sharply and tightened her crossed arms.

"Yes, I know, but I have a plan this time and I need your-"

"Oh, do you now?" she replied, words stained with sarcasm as she zipped her jacket up further and looked back over towards the door. "You hearing him, Lena? I told you this was a waste of time."

"Please." Genji implored. "I just need you to listen-"

Faster than the eye could blink, Fareeha whirled back around and leaned in on Genji until she was so close that the only thing in his field of vision was her vicious glare.

"No, you listen!" she snapped. "Before I came here, Mum called me up and told me everything. While you were busy coming up with this stupid 'plan', Angela joined up with Jack Morrison!" She pushed him back a step with an accusatory finger to the chest. "Oh, and I'm _certain_ you'll like this: The first thing they did together was kick the fucking hornet's nest by murdering Moira O'Deorain!"

Genji saw Fareeha's brows furrow in more detail than he wanted. They'd all seen the news reports dating back to when Winston alerted them to the break-in at Watchpoint: Colorado years ago, which in retrospect was where the former Strike Commander first showed how far off the rails he'd gone. It also didn't need to be said how putting a bullet through Talon's resident mad scientist meant it was a miracle that the doctor's head wasn't mounted on a wall yet. "I know." he whispered. "I was only trying to help-"

The look she shot him was stone cold, and her tone was even colder. "The road to hell's paved with good intentions."

Before Genji could get another word in, she was already heading out the way she'd come in. The only reason she turned back was because she realized that Tracer wasn't following her.

"Are you coming or what?" she asked, almost demanded.

"I want to hear what he has to say." Tracer explained.

Fareeha's face contorted in disbelief. "You can't seriously be taking his side?!"

"I'm not taking anyone's side."

Though her mind raced with plenty of good comebacks, words failed Fareeha completely until all she could do was throw her arms up in the air and grunt in dismay. Nine times out of ten Tracer was always the chipper one in the room, but when she put her foot down no one had the guts to argue with her, not even a decorated soldier.

As she leaned up against the wall and zipped up her jacket further, Tracer eyed her with a suspicious look that wordlessly told her to play along, which Fareeha met with an unreadable look of her own.

All the while, Genji watched the two of them, trying to keep an anxious feeling from bubbling over. He tried to force a smirk but the levity smoldered out before it could have any real effect. He then cleared his throat to get his friends' attention and looked them straight in the eye. Fareeha seemed to be holding back some of her venom, which was confirmed as she stole a side-eyed glance at Tracer.

"So yes," he said, his voice whisper-quiet. "I do want to try again, and I do have a plan. I've... I've found where Angela's staying, and Athena's helped me get a few things ready."

He paused so he could let himself breathe before his chest could burst. His eyes darted around the room anxiously; Up, down, side to side, and straight ahead, where Fareeha and Tracer were still providing their undivided attention.

"I'll... need to go alone," he continued. "I-If Talon's watching, any more than one or two people would give her away-"

"Then why did you call us?"

Fareeha's demand, given just before Tracer could elbow her in the side, gave Genji pause enough to allow his anxiousness to start boiling again. What he'd wanted to say had gone clean out the window, leaving him feeling like a sheet twisting on a clothesline in the wind.

Fareeha and Tracer exchanged looks again as the silence grew damning, the former raising an eyebrow as though to say ' _I told you so_ '. This time, when she headed back towards the exit, Tracer followed, though not before looking back over her shoulder, pain and disappointment heavy in her eyes.

It was then, at that precise moment when it all seemed to have come crashing down, that something deep within him clicked. It felt impossible, like climbing Mount Everest in a blizzard, and the idea of giving up flashed tantalizingly across his thoughts.

And yet, as strong as that feeling was, it was overpowered. Even if his words weren't planned out, he knew that it was coming straight from the heart and goddammit, it felt _right_.

"I don't know." he called out.

The blend of assertiveness and vulnerability in his voice gave Fareeha pause, though she didn't bother to look behind her.

"I... I don't know. Maybe to say I'm sorry for being an inconsiderate fool, maybe to try to get your help because she means as much to you as she does to me, or maybe something else; I'm just going with what comes out." He snorted with self-directed bemusement. "I guess it's a little ironic: After two weeks of trying to plan what to say," he remarked. "I just end up going with what feels right." He placed a hand on the back of his neck as he breathed in and out meditatively. "I thought I knew back at Angela's house, that I could just remind her who she was and it would all work out perfectly." he said, his voice whisper-quiet and his tone somber. "But, I suppose... that was the problem."

By this point, Tracer had taken notice of him again, and was beginning to put the pieces together with a growing sense of joy. She tapped on Fareeha's shoulder, but still she just stood in the doorway, head down and shoulders closed in.

Regardless, instinct and need pushed Genji onward. "Tracer knows this already, but I... I've been in love with Dr. Ziegler ever since she first saved my life." he said, letting out a long exhale as though an incredible weight had been lifted off his back. "She was smart, funny, kind, insightful. Every time she looked at me, every time we talked after the base had gone quiet late at night, it felt like she was the only person who didn't look at this..." He gestured to himself, specifically the cybernetics that kept him in one piece. "like I was a freak. I felt so much hate; What I'd become, the life I faced, myself, everything. It tore me apart from the inside, festered and ate away at me until I turned it on someone else. I hated it all so much that I-"  
His voice box lost its control and cracked into a breathless squeak, but he kept enough of a hold on it to continue. "I don't know what I would have done without her. And yet, there she was all the same. Of all the things I hated, she was the one thing I didn't, the one person in my life who made me feel like I wasn't alone."

A squiggly smile stretched over Tracer's lips as she twisted her shirt collar up in knots, barely holding back her own tears. At the same time, though neither of them saw it, Fareeha placed a hand over her dropped jaw as her eyes floated between looking over her compressing shoulders and down at her feet.

Genji wiped the sweat off his sallow-skinned brow and the tears from the shiny metal over what was left of his jaw as he continued. "I was broken inside and out and she was so gentle, so perfect, so _angelic_. I owed her everything, and I swore I would pay her back someday."  
At his side his hand tightened in contempt, a throwing star he'd been absent-mindedly fidgeting with carving scratches into the metal on his thigh. His voice sharpened similarly as he spoke, growing with the tears that were growing back like mowed grass. "But then, then the one time she's just as human as me it all goes wrong, all because I couldn't imagine that she could ever feel like I did, like... like..."

His voice tapered off, the air in his lungs stolen out by his emotional onslaught. The attempt he made to get himself back together ended with an exhausted, anguished growl as he drove his fist into the wall, leaving the throwing star deeply embedded as he finally succumbed and fell into deep sobbing. Tracer raced over and embraced him sweetly, offering him a shoulder to cry on that he wordlessly accepted. "It's okay." she gently shushed. "It's alright. It's not your fault."

"Yes it is."

The source of the voice and its sympathetic tone came as a shock to both Tracer and Genji as they looked over in its direction. There stood Fareeha, no longer on the verge of exiting, forcing herself to look them straight in the eye with as much bravery as she could muster, even though she felt like she wanted nothing more than to curl into the turned-up collar of her jacket and get out of sight.

But then again, she knew, so probably did Genji, and yet here he was.

"You feel like a damn, proud fool, and you don't have anyone to blame." she said, whisper-quiet and directed two ways. "You can't believe that she's just as imperfect as you and you're kicking yourself for being too blind to see it. And then when you see it all blow up in your face-"

Genji slowly released himself from Tracer's hug and stepped slowly over Fareeha's way as though he were approaching a deer. "Your only wish is that you could have been there, that you could have stood between Reyes and her and said 'leave her, take me'."

Fareeha closed her own distance just as cautiously. "And even if it ends up paving another stone on the road, you still want to try-"

"Because you'd never be able to live with yourself if you knew you could-"

"but you didn't, and because-"

They spoke in unison now."that's what she'd do."

By now the two were barely a few feet apart, close enough to see every subtle change in their face and body language. Fareeha could feel a myriad of emotions and thoughts sweeping over herself as she drooped her head and bent one leg until her tiptoes were balancing on the floor, trying in increasing vain to avoid the sentiments Genji was mirroring back. The urge to simply leave and avoid what was rapidly becoming inevitable verged on all-consuming she crossed one arm over and pinned her shoulder down. It would have been easy, quick, and painless, allowing her a way to save a little face and move on.

But even as powerful as what she wanted to do was, her conscience and good reasoning proved stronger. Pride, she'd come to realize, had been both the greatest strength and weakness of herself, the man she was faced with apologizing to, and the woman that meant so much to both of them. Her eyelids fluttered nervously until, with enough of a reservoir of courage to draw upon, she repealed the self-shielding cocoon of her jacket collar and looked him square back.  
She struggled to find the breath to say what she knew she had to. "I... Look, I'm-"

"It's okay." Genji said. "It's alright. If anything I should-."

"Don't. It's alright."

The two stared each other down again as though to wordlessly say _what now_? They mutually answered their question as they both made their way towards each other; Small steps at first, but then the strides got longer until they reached the middle ground and hugged each other long and tight. Fareeha felt a cathartic wave sweep over her like if a knot had been tied in her heart and had just been undone. Likewise, while she certainly couldn't read minds, she didn't have to to know that Genji was undergoing the same experience. His drooped shoulders and eased stance did the work for her.

She looked over the cyborg's shoulder as they let go, she noticed Tracer looking on, an overjoyed grin on her face but also a few furrows on her brow that meant she wasn't seeing the whole picture, something both her and Genji alike both deserved. After a short, self-reaffirming breath and sweeping a braid of hair behind her ear, she obliged the both of them in a quiet, regretful tone.

"When I was fifteen, around the time Mum and I moved into the compound, I was going through some... issues." she said, clearly dredging through a time and place that she'd hoped to never visit again. "I mean, clinically diagnosable issues, not just your typical angry, hormonal teenager stuff. I hadn't seen Dad in years, all Mum and I ever did was have shouting matches, and nobody else in all of Geneva seemed to care. I felt angry, depressed, hollow, disgusted, and just... isolated, like I was sealed up in a box that no one else could get to."  
She pursed her lips and her eyelids fluttered as she crossed one arm over her stomach. She'd figured that talking about those days wouldn't get easier over time, but she'd never guessed it would make her feel like she was going to throw up. Still, with Genji looking on encouragingly and with Tracer right behind him, it had to be worth it.

"Then one day," she murmured. "Angela walked into the empty mess hall and saw me taking a knife to my wrists. The long ways, not sideways. I'd only just begun, but there was already blood running down onto my pants and I felt cold and sick, like I was going to vomit. I expected her to start chewing me out, to drag me over to the medical ward and yell in my face about what a stupid thing I'd done. She would have been right to, but she didn't. Instead..." The edges of her mouth curled up faintly. "instead she took out a long strip of plastic from her lab coat pocket, placed it on my arm like a Band-Aid, sat down across from me, looked me right in the eye and gave me this." From a pocket on her jacket, she produced a key with a faded chain that read ' _Come by anytime you want: Doctor-patient confidentiality guaranteed_.'

Genji felt for his locket, clasping the polished silver object tightly and fidgeting with it much like he had the throwing star earlier. No matter who it was, Angela always seemed to leave her mark on people.

"I think she could see I was a little confused," Fareeha continued, leaning against the wall as she did. "so she said 'Don't worry, you're not in trouble. I just hope that we can talk.' Then, she just smiled and walked away. I went to pick up the knife again as the door closed, but whatever she had on that bandage must have started working by then because my cut was healing and I was feeling... warm." Her voice began to teeter into a vibrato and her face scrunched in sour reflection. "It was when I picked up the knife and looked at it again, that's when I threw up."

A long silence followed where neither Tracer nor Genji really knew what to say or do next. If they did they kept to themselves, waiting for another moment and watching as Fareeha cupped her forehead in her open hand, letting the key dangle on its chain as she sank onto the bench like it was a marshmallow. "Later that day, I came by and she asked me if I wanted to talk. I was terrified, but I said yes. I sat down, she asked what I wanted to talk about, and from there..." She buried her face deeper into her hand, but her heaving shoulders gave it all away. "everything just poured out."

As tears now overcame her too, Tracer and Genji found their moment and each took a seat flanking their friend to console her, offering up shoulders and tender arms. Neither of them had known just how far back Fareeha and Angela went, but now it all seemed clear as day. Genji in particular felt as much comforted by Fareeha's showing of vulnerability as her own acceptance of his, if only because seeing how the doctor had saved both of their lives put to rest what he'd been so worried about when this encounter began.

 _You were right, father_ , he thought. _You were right._

"It's okay, it's okay. Just let it all out." Tracer hushed tenderly to Fareeha as she brushed her tear-stained braids. She herself was struggling to fight off joining in the "Everything's going to be alright."

"We have to try," Genji added, almost using Fareeha's shoulder as much as she was using his. "and we're going to.

Fareeha lifted her heavy head upright and unpinned an arm from between Tracer's back and the wall. "How?" she inquired.

Just then, a telltale electronic chirp echoed over the PA system, while the TV screen across from the trio lit up to display first the pinpointed location of where Angela and Jack had last been seen, then the Overwatch logo with multiple caller IDs underneath.

Fareeha and Tracer both swiveled their heads in Genji's direction, both looking much more responsive than earlier. The cyborg ninja, in return, raised his closed palm up to stomach level and straightened his curled fingers to reveal his locket.

"We build a bridge over troubled water," he said. "Together."  
At the same time, he reached out with two fingers for Fareeha's key, stopping as he gained a loose hold to await her next move. A brief upswell in uncertainty coursed through his mind; This was a critical moment he'd planned for, even if it wasn't exactly how he'd thought it would go. But then again, that had been the theme of sorts for the past several heartfelt minutes, and even with the emotional difficulties he knew he'd be at peace no matter what happened next. Still watching and realizing what was going on, Tracer smiled at him in the same way.

Fareeha, meanwhile, didn't make Genji wait for long. She didn't loosen her grip on the key, but rather she slowly jerked it out of his grasp and placed her own hand on top of the locket. Her face stayed straight, but the glint in her eyes showed renewed hope. "Together."

Tracer beamed as she stood up and extended her arm to join the pledge. "Together."

The tricky part was beaten. And yet, even through their revivified optimism and heart-to-heart bonding, there was a shared, minute sense that the hardest was yet to come. What would happen next would not only measure their efforts' worth, but would determine the fates of at least one, maybe two, of the people they once called friends, forever.


	13. Chapter 13: Risk Of Breaking

In some ways, things had ended. In others, they'd only just begun.

It was the absolute dead of night when Jack and Angela returned to the seedy little apartment. Not a single working light could be seen on the outside, and the minuscule buzzing lamp on the front desk was the only source of the long, dark shadows that crisscrossed the lobby. She entered first, practically collapsing into an ugly red-velvet lounge chair. Jack, meanwhile, stood an intense guard outside the front door for some time, making sure they hadn't been followed.

Angela's arms sagged loosely over the sides and she groaned from exhaustion and the physical sickness that came with extreme stress. Her hair, still heavy and greasy on her head from smoke and sweat, slipped out of her ponytail and drooped in every which way and direction. She felt so tired that even the hard wood under threadbare cushions felt as soft as a cloud, and at the moment she wanted nothing more than to simply close her eyes and dose off into sweet, blissful sleep.

But when she obliged her desire, all she found was nightmares.

* * *

 _She lays on the floor in the ballroom next to the lifeless frames of the Omnic dignitaries. She isn't impaled on the Junker's hook, but she's still soaked in the pool of blood she lies face-down in. She tries to close her eyes or to roll onto her back, but she finds she can't move. She watches, utterly helpless, as Overwatch fights back around her against Reaper. One by one they're slaughtered until only Genji remains. Her heart leaps into her throat as he draws his katana, only to have it wrenched out of his hand as the revenant tackles him to the ground. As he raises a combat knife he's taken from his coat and plunges it through Genji's heart, she makes a pathetic kitten-cry. The green lights of the cyborg's prosthesis permanently snuffed out, his murderer looks up, but his face is not the monster's spectral mask._

 _The man under the dark hood isn't wearing any sort of mask, in fact. His face is clear to see, and it's not Gabriel Reyes._

 _It's Jack._

 _She gasps in horror, coughing as more blood is sucked into her lungs. She doubles over as she sputters for air and when she finds it, she looks back up to see Moira's gnarled face on every single corpse. Her friends at Overwatch are nowhere to be found, only the mad scientist's blank, glazed eyes staring at her endlessly. The only face that isn't a dead woman's is Genji, still with a knife embedded in his heart._

 _"You did this." Jack whispers ethereally._

 _Tears and mascara roll down her face, intermingling with the pool of blood draining from the corpses over to where she lies. "No." she replies, her voice fragile with terror._

 _The monster takes his steps towards her and raises his pulse rifle to her head. "There was no other way."_

 _She finds no peace in inevitability this time. She wants nothing more than to fight back, to scream, to do anything to stop this. All of a sudden, she feels the cool metal and solid plastic of her pistol in her hand. She can stop this; If she can shoot him, she can end it all!_

 _But even with every last bit of strength she can muster, she can't bring herself to raise her weapon and kill him. Even in Reaper's clothes, she still sees Jack's face, his golden hair and sky-blue eyes. This isn't the face of a monster._

 _His grip on the rifle tightens. He says one last thing before the trigger is pulled. "Wake up."_

* * *

"Wake up."

Angela yelped in terror as Jack shook her awake, flailing and gasping for air for a couple brief, frantic seconds. Her eyes darted around the room as she remembered where she was, bringing her the easing calm of familiarity.

He stood motionless over her as he shouldered his rifle and extended an arm to help her up. "You alright?" he asked curtly.

As she stood up and took his hand, Angela wiped trickles of cold sweat off her forehead and raked her fingers through her hair to get it back in her ponytail.  
"I'm fine. Just a bad dream." she said. She felt inside her pockets, sighing with relief when she reaffirmed that the Ghost Serum, her datapad, and Moira's recorder were still safely tucked away. "Nothing I can't fix."

"Good." Jack replied. "We weren't followed, but there's no guarantee that Talon won't pick up our scent. How long do you need to complete Moira's work?"

Her exhaustion was magnified by the mental number-crunching. "I-I don't know; Three weeks, maybe a month?"

"You have two. After that we'll need to move to keep ahead of Reyes and his cronies."

Angela wanted to retort, to tell him that the kind of science they were working with wasn't something that could be rushed, but after everything she'd been through she wasn't in any condition for a debate. Her head drooped submissively as she rubbed her bloodshot eyes.

Jack, meanwhile, seemed to be unaffected by fatigue. "We start tomorrow. You go upstairs and secure everything. I'll catch up."

With that, the former Strike Commander made a beeline for the lobby desk, where the snaggle-toothed receptionist had been staring lecherously at Angela ever since they'd returned. Angela herself headed for the stairs, stopping at the foot to watch Jack slam the attendant's face into the counter until his nose was a bloody pile of mush and snarl a threat to rip the old creep's face off if he told anyone they were here. When the old man tried to mewl something in his own defense, the words didn't even have time to leave his mouth before they were stolen away by the tip of a jagged combat knife, pressed against his Adam's Apple until blood trickled down the sharpened steel.

Angela didn't realize she'd gasped until Jack suddenly looked her way. She covered her mouth with her hand in embarrassment as he left the attendant with a punch to the face.  
"I thought I told you to secure the second floor." he growled as he shoved past her on the stairs.

Words failed Angela aside from a few weak um's and ah's as she followed him up the staircase to the next level, leaving her with just an exhausted frown. As much of a despicable human being as the attendant was, she'd been able to shut him up before with just a bribe and a stern glare.  
But in a way, she supposed, it made sense. There was no denying that a soldier and a doctor were going to approach a problem in two different yet equally valid ways; She'd shouted herself hoarse back in the Golden Age before learning that lesson. And yet still...

"You going to answer me or what?" Jack insisted once they reached their hallway.

Finally, Angela hid a begrudging look under her heavy eyelids and let her shoulders droop like wilted flowers. "Sorry. It's kind of been a long day, and I'm very, _very_ tired." she explained half-heartedly. "I'm going to clean up and turn in."  
Immediately she found herself regretting what she'd said as the memory of less than five minutes ago bubbled up, but the fact that her eyelids felt like they weighed a metric tonne and the itching feeling of the blood, sweat, and smoke that coated her skin made it worth the risk in her weary mind.

Jack's trigger finger twitched erratically; Had it actually been wrapped around its namesake instead of resting on the grip, the smoke-stained popcorn ceiling would have been checkered with energy projectile holes.  
"Fine." he said, keeping the venom in his pronunciation hidden under a whispery voice. As he did so, he opened the door to the apartment and gestured for her to go first.

After a moment of searching, she found a light switch that actually worked and flicked it on, spreading dull yellow light across the decrepit room. "I'll take the couch." she said, a smirk curling up one side of her flaccid expression as a darkly funny thought crossed her addled mind. "You mind if I borrow a blanket? I always get a better night's sleep when there's no duct tape involved."

The force with which Jack slammed the door shut, however, showed that he was far from amused. "Drop the lip." he snapped. "That's the last thing we need right now. Understand?"

Angela was too tired to hear as she headed for the washroom to freshen up, stripping her Valkyrie suit and wings off and leaving them to hang on the doorknob as she closed it, believing herself to have a moment of privacy to hopefully unwind the tension that played havoc with her.

For that moment, she was right. The moment after was another matter.

Fifteen minutes later, after washing the smoke off her face with a threadbare towel and cleaning the grime out of her hair with cheap shampoo, she changed into a trim white nightgown and took a look in the mirror above the sink. A light smile crept across her face; For the first time in weeks her face wasn't dominated by sagging lines and heavy bags underneath her eyes. Even the lingering sting of her scar had seemed to dull.

 _What do you know_ , she mused. _I guess it worked_.

She took in a deep breath and let the steam from the shower fill her lungs. She still felt like sleeping the sleep of the dead, but she welcomed it. Tomorrow would be a new day, the beginning of a new chapter in her story. She'd do what she had to, kill the monster who took her so low, and move on. She could envision her future on the other side of the door as she opened it.

On the other side, Jack was waiting for her.

She shrieked and jumped reflexively, momentarily blinded by the glare from his visor. In a tsunami-wave of shock, she stumbled backwards into a puddle on the washroom floor, slipping and impacting the fake plastic tiles with a dull, sore thump. For an instant longer she squirmed desperately back towards the shower and nearly adopted the fetal position before rationality stopped her where she lay.

"You didn't answer me." he growled.

Angela clutched her chest to still her heart before it could jackhammer through her ribcage and to try to keep herself from hyperventilating. She looked back up with eyes as wide as dinner plates at Jack, who was staring her down as he stood motionless in the doorway with his rifle hung at his side. Whatever emotion on his face was invisible, obscured by his mask and the searing red over his eyes. Some frightened, instinctive little corner of her subconscious drew a comparison between him and a monster closing in on its victim, or a rea-

"I said 'do you understand'?"

Her legs felt like jelly, but Angela still managed the strength to stand up. Under her barely-caught breath, she began listing profanities in every non-English language she knew as she pulled the hem of her nightgown, crumpled from the fall and her struggle, back down to a less vulnerable position.

"Do you understand-"

"What are you even talking about?!" Angela finally blurted out.

Jack's jabbed an accusatory finger into her collarbone. "You know exactly what. The last thing we need is you not taking this seriously!"

"That doesn't mean you get to scare me half to death like some creep!" she shouted. "What the hell is wrong with you?!"

Jack wound his finger into his fist and recoiled it like a snake ready to strike, but when he saw the glare that twisted across Angela's face in an instant he hesitated.

Without saying a word, she got her point across crystal clear. _Don't. You. Dare._

His breath hissed between his teeth as the fist dropped, even though it was still rigid. For the first time that night he could feel fatigue creeping over him, but he forced it away with a shake of his head.  
"Two weeks." he seethed. "We start tomorrow." With that, he about-faced and made his way to the bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind him.

No sooner had he left when the adrenaline wore off and Angela felt even more exhausted than before. She was already just about asleep by the time she'd trudged over to the couch and collapsed face-first onto it, but a stinging sensation that she was all too familiar with briefly ensured that she'd stay awake a little longer. At the same time, a heavy lock of hair drooped over her forehead, spreading its grease over her forehead.  
She buried her face in a cushion. _Verdammt_.

Sleep was tenuous that night; At a few points she stirred upon hearing a bumping sound echoing through the dark, but finding its origin without actually having to get up soon proved impossible. When she finally was able to doze off in the long term, some piece of her memory called forth the day she'd met with Ana, and some piece of advice about a person's breaking point the former Captain of Overwatch had imparted while boiling a kettle of tea. Angela had dismissed it then as needless and heavy-handed, and even now she did the same as her thoughts drifted off and unconsciousness set in.

If the usual nightmares came, she didn't remember them. What she did remember was feeling like she was about to freefall off the edge of a cliff.

Just like in the alleyway.


	14. Chapter 14: Sounds

The first rays of morning light peeked through the newspaper-shrouded windows, briefly causing Angela to grimace as she shielded her heavy eyes from the soft glow. She looked down and away when the golden beams trickled through the spaces between her fingers, directing her vision towards the small calendar she kept in the poor excuse for a kitchen-turned-laboratory.

 _Two weeks_ , she remarked inwardly as she realized the date. _Has it really gone by that fast?_

She snapped on a pair of vinyl gloves and brushed back her hair as she braved the sunlight and focused on the centrifuge, which had just wound down to a standstill. The concoction, now dulled from a sandy yellow to an eerie obsidian after nonstop testing, swirled erratically as she picked the vial up, radiating an intense heat that nearly caused her to drop it before she could place it on the counter next to the Petri dish of Ghost Serum. She winced as she pulled off the glove, slightly singed from the heat, and studied over her fingers; Thankfully, it looked like they weren't going to blister if she left them unattended.

 _Gott sei Dank_ , she thought. _I can't afford to waste any more time_.

Almost as an instinct she checked over her shoulder, expecting to see Jack monitoring her progress. For the past two weeks he'd been as busy as she had; If he wasn't out killing any Talon agents on their trail, he was watching her like a hawk as she worked, looking over every minute detail and demanding constant updates that bordered on incessant as time progressed. Sometimes he'd even disappear off the face of the earth for days on end, only to show up again out of the blue, wanting another update. Angela had asked him one time where he'd gone after noticing fresh blood on his gloves, but he ignored her as though the question was never posed.

This time, however, she knew he was just in the apartment bedroom, and as such Angela sighed with relief and rolled her bloodshot eyes. "You're getting paranoid, Angela." she murmured to herself. "There's no one else here and there's nothing wrong."

She pushed aside an unplugged electric Bunsen burner and a growing mountain of empty Chinese food containers in a search for the two most valuable piece of equipment she had in the apartment kitchen-turned-laboratory. For a moment her eyes widened in distress, but a quick rifling through her pockets found her datapad to be, in retrospect, exactly where she'd left them last night.

She let an exhale grow into a yawn and tried to harvest whatever would pass for rest from a long blink before turning on the two devices. "Mixing process complete," she noted in the recorder. "The formula looks to be growing unstable, most likely as a result of repeated tests as well as the more dramatic temperature range that Test Twenty Five proved necessary. I'll have to chill it for a few minutes longer before running the next one."

She paused briefly to yawn again, stretching her arms above her head and rotating her shoulders as she did so to work out the stiffness of fatigue. "But for now, that will have to wait," she continued. "Now I just need to find my syringe."

With a moment's more searching and a moment spared for a self-deprecating smirk she had, and soon the needle was filled with the sable liquid. The inky Ghost Serum on the Petri Dish seemed to squirm as she suspended it over the dish, something she noted in her datapad.

"As for a hypothesis," she added to the recorder. " well... something good. This is the last fresh piece of Ghost Serum left, and Jack's going to get even more anxious if I ask him for another DNA sample. To that end," she said through another yawn. "beginning Test Thirty One."

As the last of the syringe's drops were emptied out, she reached for her datapad and readied a simulated, looped animation with a few taps. The video showed the formula's effects taking hold in just a few seconds, solidifying and shattering the Serum in the same way as when it had last been used.

Gruesome details aside, Angela knew, there were more than a few changes she'd had to make. It had taken her four days of eighteen hour work to solve what she'd labelled 'the Moira problem' where affected Serum would return to full form unless it was bonded with living tissue. Another five days after that, the healing properties of the American super-soldier chemicals were found to practically negate any severe damage done to living DNA. Remembering how she'd missed that for so long and how furious Jack had gotten made Angela gently slap her forehead, but like every other obstacle she'd faced, she knew, she could beat it.

Even if some seemed so much harder than others...

But before she could solve this or any other problem, Angela reminded herself, there was one thing she wanted to do.

She rubbed her left eye gingerly, flinching as it seared with pain for a second like a lance through a boil and waiting in vain for the blurry picture it sent to her brain to focus. This had all begun on the night she and Jack had returned from killing Moira, and over the two weeks it had grown from a question mark to an annoyance, and then to a concern. When she nearly tripped over a loose floorboard she hadn't seen three days ago, it became clear that time to solve this problem had to be reserved.

Setting aside the datapad, she reached for another device, one that looked like a modified optometrist's eye examiner mounted on the rusty pole of a broken desk lamp. She sniffed in mild amusement as she twisted a few knobs into place, finding herself in the awkward position of believing that this side project was necessary, but still not wanting to do it. Maybe this, she pondered, was why some of her old patients had complained about their physicals even as she'd examined them. Not just in the Oasis clinic, but the other members of Overwatch back in the day even. Winston, Tracer, Ana, Torbjorn; They'd all said in partial jest that they could think of other places they wanted to be. Even Genji had come up with a funny quip or two. Although she was sure he hadn't realized, the cyborg could be a very charming conversationalist when he wanted to.

Like that one day before everything happened...

The musing faded away like morning dew under the sun as reality checked back in. Once the last piece on the device was in place, she readied a new recording and leaned in so that the machine could do its job.

"Angela's Log: Supplemental." she said as the mechanisms gently whirred and clicked. "I've been noticing a physical deterioration as of late in my left eye. Previous tests showed no signs of brain trauma, no correlation was found to Reaper's scar, and my overall health has been stable. I had Jack pick up some cataract medication, but its effect has been negligible. Hopefully a thorough retinal scan will get to the bottom of this mystery before it leads to me making a mistake."

By the time she'd shut off her recorder, the examiner had completed its task and was already wirelessly uploading the information to her datapad to be analyzed. Thanks to an automated deciphering program she'd uploaded some time ago, all she had to do was wait.

Wait, and hope that both of today's experiments were successful.

A sharp crack and an icy sizzle served as the perfect segue back to the main task. She turned her head over to see what it was, to which the rest of her followed suit when the question was answered. In the Petri dish, the two mixtures had coalesced and interacted exactly how they were simulated to; The thin, ethereal vapours of the Ghost Serum had completely solidified and crumbled into a hundred solid chunks, twinkling like glass in the shimmering sun.

Angela's jaw dropped nearly as fast as the recorder, though she was able to snatch the latter before it could hit the floor. She leaned over the counter's edge, regarding the results with equal parts disbelief and optimistic shock. Taking the syringe up again, she gently prodded one of the larger fragments before impaling it cleanly and splitting it in two. Nothing came out from the inside, and the two dodecahedronal shards otherwise lost no integrity.

When she raised the recorder and turned it on, she saw her hands were shaking. Her voice was no different.

"Update on the Ghost Serum. I... I..."

Her sentence was paused as she rushed into a flurry of movement. The empty Chinese containers were sent flying as she swiped them aside in a single long motion, plugged in the Bunsen burner, and heated it to the maximum setting. With a pair of tongs she managed to snatch from the counter just before they tipped over the counter's edge with the food containers, she held the fragment over its electric coils for several seconds before placing the objects back in their original spots.

When she lifted the recorder again, she silently hoped she hadn't accidentally kept it on the whole time. The relief she felt when she visually confirmed where her fingers had rested, though, did nothing to slow the drum-beat of her heart.

"Okay, heat did nothing so..." Her voice went hoarse just from thinking about the words. "I did it." She held herself up at the counter's edge with her elbow as her knees threatened to buckle and she felt light-headed from hyperventilation. "I did it. By _Gott im Himmel_ , I did it."

The abrupt, wonderful urge to shout to the heavens loud enough for God to hear overtook her, and so that was exactly what she did until catharsis swept over her in a tidal wave, finally bringing her to her knees and sending a deluge of tears streaming down her face. Their raw sting on her scar and the thick oils on her hair's unkempt locks didn't matter; In fact, she barely noticed them for one simple reason.

Reaper's days were now officially numbered.

She doubled over and collapsed onto her side as the effects of sustained euphoria on her fatigue-ravaged mind and body began to take their toll. Tears still rolled down from her face onto the scratchy carpeted floor as the desire to fall into a sleep that could gladly last an eternity grew from within until it was all she thought about.

That is, until she saw the hologram.

She figured the old disc had to have been at the foot of the Chinese takeout mountain, swept away in the avalanche she'd created and turned on when it had careened to a halt on the floor. Seeing the thin scars stretched over his image and his optimistically stoic expression erased most of her fatigue and replaced it with a reminder of her obligations.

She peered over at the door to his room as she picked it and herself up, briefly surprised that Jack hadn't come out when he'd heard the commotion. But then again, she thought, it didn't really matter since she was going to tell him anyways. After all, this was their moment of triumph. Everything that they'd worked, for, fought for, and even...

It had all been so that they could finally put an end to that monster and his reign of terror. With slow, wobbly steps, she made for a drawer just underneath the instruments of Reyes' demise, sliding it open with a jerk and retrieving her pistol for the first time since Oasis.

Two weeks that felt like a lifetime and far too soon all at once.

Her hand shook like a leaf as she wrapped her palm around the grip and remembered how stiff the trigger was, and staring over the stubby grey barrel tied her stomach in so many knots she nearly vomited. Still, she was able to force everything back down and hang the pistol on a belt loop with a carabiner.

 _Soon_ , she told herself. _Soon, but not yet._

With a click, she shut off the hologram in her other hand and placed it on the counter. A confident smile crossed her lips, and though the result was meek compared to what she'd hoped would come naturally, it did bring a temporary relief that she made sure to savour.

 _There's still one last thing to set_ _right_ , she thought. _A monster to kill and a hero to help me with it._

It would be the last time she ever thought of Jack in such a way.

The empty thud stopped her in her tracks like a brick wall, and like the other times in the past fortnight she did a slow three hundred sixty degree turn in place, looking and listening for anything that proved Reaper had finally caught up. Like every other instance she could feel the adrenaline stiffening her muscles in ready of whether she chose fight or flight, and like every time before she let herself droop once a few minutes of discerning shapes from shadows cast by dull yellow bulbs had proven nothing was there.

Until it happened again.

The thuds had been a mainstay all throughout the past weeks, so much so that Angela had once joked to Jack that the apartment might be haunted. Predictably, he'd responded with a harsh demand that she keep focused, but the small laugh she got out of it had been a bright spot in an otherwise colourless length of time.

But they'd never been like this. Not just with the anomaly of how close together they were this time, but with all her energies no longer solely devoted to one thing and one thing only, the sound came to her in greater depth. It pierced hauntingly through the deadened air as she crossed one arm over and grasped her other tightly. She flinched when it happened again; Each one resonated off the wooden walls in a desperate, human way that squeezed her ribs tight around her lungs.

Angela hadn't believed in ghosts since she was five years old, but she'd always been game to hear one of Reinhardt's famous stories, even if they were all just variations on the same basic plot. That had all changed when Reyes made his return; Suddenly ghosts became something real and sinister, more than just a misty illusion that haunted a person's dreams.  
No, what Angela had her eyes and ears back on a swivel for was truly a monster if there ever was one. What she looked for was born from the ashes of good people and enabled by those too endeared or too consumed to see it, going further and further past the point of no return until even the most cruel and inhuman things imaginable couldn't be put past them.

The bump came again. Listening for it like a grazing herd animal would listen for a predator, she picked out the sound's location, a deduction that raised more questions than it answered when the only thing in its direction was a solid wall. Under the ancient incandescent bulbs buzzing above her, the already dull colours of the room swirled together into a mass of grey and brown that only the most vibrant shades could stand out from.

Something as vibrant as blood-red.

The patch was dammed a foot from the wall by the edge of the carpet, and its fresh, scarlet radiance drew Angela closer with the same curiosity as a moth to a flame. Regarding the patch, her dreary mind racked itself for answers as to why the walls would be leaking blood. It seemed like something out of Reinhardt's stories, and the concept made her smirk accordingly as she propped herself against the wall with one arm.

The next sound she heard wasn't another thud. It was a click. At the same time, things began to click in her thoughts as well.

As the section of wall she leaned on gave way by a few inches and began to swing inward on hidden hinges, questions she'd been too tired to ask at first glance incinerated her exhaustion and rose a disturbed curiosity in its place like bread rising in an oven, questions like ' _why was there blood coming from behind a wall?_ ' _'why is there a hidden door?'_ and ' _does Jack know about this?'_ that she immediately came to realize would be answered as soon as she opened the door.

To that end, she did so gingerly, hoping that the hinges didn't squeak and give her away; Some little nagging notion fed by curiosity and adrenaline had latched itself onto her predictions, telling her that discretion was key. The less Jack knew at that moment, the better. That, and she was too entranced by the mystery to call for him.

When the door finally swung open to lay the room's secrets to bare, she'd gone in a hundred ideas of what could have awaited her, ranging from harmless to horrifying and any one of them as valid as the other.

The truth, as it turned out, was a hundred times worse than any of them.

Even before her eyes had adjusted to the utter blackness, she was stonewalled by a sinus-burning smell of iron, ammonia, and God only knew what else, the same combination of things she could feel sloshing sickeningly under her feet. All of it was made even more vile by the intense heat that hung within its confines, beating oppressively on her after just a step inside.

As the light from the main area finally penetrated into the void, it revealed a scene akin to a horror movie. "What happened here?" she mouthed as she saw that the room, barely four feet long by five across, was entirely bare. No lights, no fixtures, nothing but blood-stained walls and cold concrete floors from top to bottom.

Nothing, except for the source of the thuds.

Another one echoed through the dark emptiness, allowing Angela to finally pinpoint its location, and what she found stopped her breathing cold.

There was no ghost. It was a woman.

A woman she knew, and when she recognized her she cupped a hand over her dropped jaw.

 _Fio._

The former Blackwatch pilot, retired for almost a dozen years last Angela had heard, was on the floor in little more than her underwear, gagged and in the fetal position, her hands and feet bound so tightly that the duct tape exposed raw, festering muscle. Her figure was severely emaciated and much of her skin was caked in filth, making sure the cuts and puss-filled abrasions looked and smelled ferociously disgusting. Her auburn hair had been messily shaved, leaving long bloody scars running inbetween scraggly patches. Her emerald eyes, filled with a daring twinkle last Angela had seen them, stared blindly into space, while her face conveyed only an expression of delirious pain. When her head lolled backwards from the wall and rolled heavily, it revealed a rotting hole where her right ear should have been.

Angela could barely comprehend what she saw, but a doctor's compassion kept her together in spite of the horror. She crouched down next to Fio, staying as quiet as possible knowing that the poor woman was still oblivious to her presence. With each passing second, she could feel everything inside of herself rising like the tide, poised to burst free at a moment's notice. It was only a few seconds before she physically removed herself to catch the breath she'd been holding to try to force back the tears. With a drawn-out exhale, though, she sewed her courage to the sticking place as best she could and readied to dive once more unto the breach.

But before she could make a house call, the doctor needed to get her tools.

In spite of the clutter, she was able to locate what she needed in only a couple minutes: Cotton balls, antiseptic, steri-strips, a scalpel, an IV drip of nanobiotics, and a blanket were all carried under her arms as she re-entered the scene. She paused briefly in the doorway, looking over her shoulder again before shaking a notion out of her head and closing the door behind her until it was almost shut, but still cracked open.

Angela's actions towards Fio were as instinctive as they were gentle. She'd been there for people in an even worse physical state than the former Blackwatch pilot, though something about the circumstances felt twice as disturbing...

 _No_ , she thought as she pursed her lips. _It can't be. It wouldn't be_.

She buried herself deeper in her work, bandaging her patient's lacerations and dabbing the infections with the cotton balls and antiseptic. The sting must have been enough to draw Fio back to lucidity, since the weak but purposeful leveling of her head showed Angela that there was still someone home behind the lights.

She crouched closer, keeping her movements slow and predictable. Fio's listless gaze wandered around her immediate front as it fell out of the middle distance, and the last thing the doctor wanted to do was startle her in her condition.

Butterflies danced in Angela's stomach as she watched her patient twitch with each dab of antiseptic. Even now she clung to a faint scrap of hope, if only to ward off a cold, scary truth. She forced herself to breathe through her nose as an internal dialogue wracked her mind.

 _Why are you still here?_

 _Because she needs medical attention and you're a doctor, that's why_.

 _There's only one reason why Fio needs you right now._

 _How do you know that? There could be any number of reasons why she's here._

 _Stop being dense and look around you! What do you need, a handwritten letter saying 'Dear Angela, I tortured Blackwatch's old pilot. No hard feelings, Jack Morrison'?!_

 _Whatever happened to 'innocent until proven guilty'?_

 _Whatever happened to the woman so sick of excuses she never wanted to see Geneva again, or to the woman who quit Overwatch a second time? Whatever happened to Ana's warning about that monster?!_

 _Reyes is the monster!_

 _Then what's Jack?_

 _He's... We... I... You don't know what happened here!_

 _Really? Then how's about you pull off that gag and ask Fio herself?_

Shaking her head finally snapped her back to reality and the task at hand. She had better things to do than debate with herself, she knew.

And yet, as she reached for her next item, something inside her thoughts felt unshakable. She sighed audibly and hung her head; She knew exactly what this notion was, what it meant, and most annoyingly of all the only way to get rid of it.

"Alright then," she whispered through pursed lips. "I will."

She felt around until the next tool she clutched in her hands was the scalpel, which she swiftly put to the duct tape bonds on Fio's feet. With a swift stroke once the outer layer had been penetrated they were severed, allowing Fio's left leg at the shins to bend limply in an unnatural direction. Angela gingerly straightened the leg out, hoping that keeping her patient calm would work in lieu of a proper splint for a compound fracture.

The gag was next; Angela shifted her tool to her other hand as she pulled it down. The bundled piece of cloth had been on so long that the beginnings of bedsores had formed on Fio's cheeks and the back of her neck. Angela reactively peeled her eyes away from the rancid ulcers, only to see her patient staring her down.

Fio's emerald eyes had finally found a semblance of focus, and the fear in them made Angela feel like her soul was being pierced clean through. Around the pupils thin spokes of blood snaked inwards, and Angela could see that the former pilot was shaking like a leaf.

She kept her voice soft, her speech slow, and maintained direct eye contact. "It's okay," she affirmed. "It's alright. I'm not going to hurt you."

She reached for the blanket and held it up, a wordless offer to wrap it around. When Fio flinched in response, Angela repealed her extended hand and laid the blanket in a crumpled pile at the door, watching as the poor soul winced in pain and looked down at her shattered leg confusedly.

"If it hurts," Angela said, being sure to keep close but not too much so. "I can help you." She reached for the IV drip with her free hand, holding it in her palm.

Fio looked up blankly at Angela, then down at her feet again, not noticing it.

"We've met before. I'm Angela."

She looked over the doctor's shoulder, her pupils shrinking as the creeping strands of light made contact.

"Angela Ziegler. Do you remember me?"

With another quick slice, the duct tape was severed at her wrists, which dropped like a stone to her sides from behind. She flinched again and Angela could see her trying to move an arm as though it were a totally foreign concept.

"Do you know how you got here?" she asked. Feeling the words come off her tongue left a lingering bad taste. "Do you know why you're here?"

Fio didn't answer again, which Angela quickly realized was because her eyes were transfixed on something else.

Something that she instantly dropped to the floor when she realized it was in full view, light shining off the pointed edge.

By then, though, it was too late.

Fio's shaking increased violently, her chest heaved with hyperventilating speed, and from between her quivering lips came a high-pitched whimper that carried pure, unfiltered terror. Angela attempted to move closer and telegraphed an attempt to offer a gentle touch, but the gesture only turned the former pilot's whimpers to blood-curdling screams. She crawled frantically into the deepest part of the room's corner she could, ignoring the physical agony she had to have been in, and collapsed into uncontrolled dry sobs of frightened hysteria.

Angela couldn't even begin to imagine what had happened to her, another human being, that had broken her so badly. Just seeing it in front of her threatened to be too much for her sense of empathy, and it was only a scrunched face and folding her arms over her chest that kept the dam from bursting. The action also worked twofold: Powerlessly watching the tragic scene of emotional damage play out sapped all the heat from her body, leaving her feeling icy cold in the Iranian heat.

Cold, and alone, and angry.


	15. Chapter 15: Come Back

The first hour went past like it was the first year.

Angela wasn't wearing a watch nor was there a clock in physical view, but she kept a reasonable sense of time as each second moved by like molasses. The hope was that it would keep her focused on the task at hand, but sitting motionless on the floor for hours on end, watching Fio in the throes of trauma and trying not to be overwhelmed by her own empathy, took the choice out of her hands.

 _How_ , she kept asking herself as time inched onward. _Why?_

Over the course of a twenty-plus year career, the doctor and seasoned battle medic had seen people take the worst cracks she could conceive. Memories of grief counselling for children orphaned by Omnic extremists, aiding maimed and bitter Crisis veterans, people and Omnics that she'd treated for post-traumatic stress after Overwatch had rescued them, and even for her former colleagues themselves. She'd lost track of just how many broken bones she'd healed, how many fractured minds and hearts she'd soothed, how many times she'd seen and heard the effects of terrible people doing terrible things. She'd even lost track of how many times she'd seen people like Fio utterly broken, though thinking about it never failed to play her heartstrings like a violin.

Before the pilot's retirement, Angela remembered, she'd been one of the bright points in an otherwise dark era for the organization, equal parts a consummate professional, quick-witted smartass, and a warm-hearted joker. When Blackwatch's best pilot wasn't pulling Genji and McCree out of tight spots in covert missions gone awry, she was comparing notes with Tracer over the most recent refits to the dropships, or sharing a laugh with Brigitte at Reinhardt's expense over a sticky prank, or light-heartedly schooling the entire team at pool on game night until Torbjorn, ever the sore loser, snapped his cue stick over his knee and stormed off in a huff to the workshop. It had even been on one of those Thursdays, the first one after Venice, when she'd announced her intention to retire and marry the lawyer from Chicago she'd been dating for the past couple years.

The memories of those days came back even clearer. Even in the middle of the nuclear fallout from the unauthorized mission to King's Row, when the team had been more divided and derided than ever, Fio's marriage had been an oasis, an easy period in the most trying of times. The entire team was at the ceremony: Angela was a bridesmaid, Jack gave a speech at the reception...

The doctor had even caught the bouquet...

She sunk her head into her hand, rubbing her temples vigorously. Even if she'd seen people fall so far, nothing before today had ever made her feel physically sick, or divided her emotions in such a murky way. Worst of all was that the more she struggled to put it out of her head, the deeper they dug their roots in until there was no option left but to address them.

 _How_ , she asked again. _Why?_

When the second hour came, Fio's sobs grew gentler, if only because her voice itself had turned to gravel and cursed her with a hacking cough whenever she was short of breath. Hoping to begin making progress again, Angela crawled over at a pace that would make the passage of time seem swift, pausing frequently to make absolutely certain her every move was telegraphed. The pilot's squirms and whimpers got neither worse nor better as she approached, but in a scenario such as this Angela knew that was the sort of improvement to expect.

Another hour passed where she lay on her stomach right next to Fio, then another hour spent at eye level, and another hour still getting her accustomed to a gentle touch on the shoulder. Eventually, like a stone in a field being worn down, inoffensive persistence and overtly pacific intentions allowed for the blanket to be draped over Fio's shoulders with no protest, and Angela counted it as a major win when the attempt to slide the pointy end of the IV drip into the protruded vein of a bony arm was not shut down by terror-stricken shrieks and violent thrashing. The untainted solution within that had saved countless civilian and Overwatch lives flowed freely down the plastic tube and into her bloodstream, where its peerless powers of healing could take effect.

If the past several hours had passed sluggishly, then what happened next came at the speed of a rocket. Barely ten minutes, by Angela's own estimate, had passed when the grotesque fractures began to realign into their proper places, clumps of necrotic tissue peeled off the stump of her ear and fell to the floor, and placid lucidity returned to her bloodshot gaze.

The pilot's face contorted with confusion as she looked around with purpose for the first time. "W-where... where am I?" she asked, barely audible.

The issue of how to respond wasn't one that Angela struggled with. "You're in a very bad place," she replied. "but I want to help you get out."

"How did I get here?"

Again she didn't struggle with how to respond, but she couldn't bring herself to look Fio in the eye for it. "I don't know."

Slowly, the recovering pilot raised a finger and pointed it directly between Angela's eyes. "You-you're... Overwatch."

"Yes, I a - was. I was."

"Like the commander."

"You mean Reyes?"

"Like the... the commander."

In the space of less than a second, Fio's face went ghostly pale and her eyes grew to the size of grapefruits. The quivering lip she'd been speaking through froze stiff, as did the rest of her body save for the finger, which inched its way down until it was limp on the floor with her hand. At the same time Angela's brow furrowed with the lines of personal experience and her scar burned like the touch of heated iron.

 _Oh no_.

"Donald?" she called out. Her voice was ethereal and detached, yet totally invested, as though she were a ghost talking to ghosts. "Donald, come back."

Angela blinked rapidly with uncertainty, but she knew there was only one way forward. "I'm here, honey," she responded, filling in the role of Fio's husband. "I'm here. Is there something wrong?"

"I, don't know. I mean, I don't think so, but I have this... this feeling, like something terrible's happened."

"Maybe I can help. Can you tell me what you're feeling?"

"I, I don't- It's just that I'm... It's hard to explain, it happened so-"

Angela matched the rising fear in Fio's voice with her own soothing tone. "It's okay. Just start at the beginning."

Fio's chest rose and fell with a series of breaths silently prompted by her spouse. Shallow as they were, they seemed to do the trick. "Well, I guess - I mean, first the, the doorbell rang. I opened it and the commander... just stood there. I hadn't seen him in so long, and he wanted to come in."

Angela felt like she was about to be turned inside out, but she convinced herself to stay on course. "Do you mean Commander Reyes?"

Her eyes began scanning over the room, looking at everything and yet nothing all at once as tears welled up. "Are you still there, my love? Come back, don't leave me."

Angela/Donald leaned in to offer a hug, which the recipient took as though it wasn't happening. "I'm here," she reassured. "I'm not going anywhere."

Cracks began to fill in the stutters in Fio's words as she spoke. "It's just that, you answered the door too, and there were fireworks outside and they made you tired so... so you lied down on the floor as the commander came in, and he went - he started to play with them."

Angela's own cracks were beginning to fill as she pulled back from the hug, only they were like pieces of the most disturbing jigsaw puzzle she could think of. "With who?"

The tears welled up again and her voice took on a shaky vibrato. "Donald, please, don't leave. I'll do anything, just come back."

"I'm right beside you," Angela said again, holding her hand gently at first then gradually tighter to reaffirm her words. "Everything will be alright."

Fio's skin went icy to the touch, and Angela could hear her heartbeat grow until it sounded like the thumping beat of one of Lucio's songs. "The commander was playing with the kids," she said through a gulped breath, "wi-with Tina and Jason. He brought them downstairs and, and he held onto them, and he kept asking 'Where is he? Where is he?', but no one knew."

A sixth sense told Angela that the dam was about to burst, and she rolled in her lips and bit down on them to tell herself that nothing was set in stone yet. They were nearly there. "What happened next, honey?"

"He, th-the commander asked them again 'where is he? Where is Reyes-"

Now Angela was on the verge of breaking. _Oh no_.

"and then, th-then there were more fireworks and... and..." The words crawled out of her mouth like a mouse, but they carried the weight of mile-long train. "Oh my God."

At that moment, the dam erupted and a deluge of tears consumed the women who'd lost everything. "Oh God!" Fio screamed through heavy cries. " _ **He murdered them!**_ Tina and Jason, _**Jack Morrison murdered our kids!**_ "

Angela leaned in closer than she had all day, embracing Fio as tight as she possibly could in a futile effort not to be swept away in the torrents of sorrow and empathy as the pilot screamed on and on.

"Donald, come back! Stay with me, don't die! Please God, I'm _begging_ you! Leave him, take me! _**PLEASE!**_ "

* * *

Angela didn't keep track of how many hours her and Fio wept together in that little corner of Hell on Earth, but even if that did matter she didn't care. Everything, every repressed memory of an unspeakable atrocity had been laid out in front of her in the hardest therapy session she'd ever conducted, and it had utterly destroyed any sense of professionalism she had left.

But like the time, that didn't matter. Everything that did was either being healed as the tears rained down, or would be soon enough.

Eventually, the comfort of shared emotion embedded itself deep enough into Fio that her wails simmered down to a more quiet despair, one that manifested with a return of Angela's hug that the doctor could feel spread a cathartic warmth deep into their respective cores. Even further down the road, tender love and care proved a fertile ground for fatigue to grow in, allowing the pilot's head to droop down and back, her breathing to even out, and for her to swiftly fall into what her angel knew had to be a sleep of the dead.

Angela, however, had no such urge, not when her internal dialogue was stirring her mind and boiling her blood.

 _Now do you believe what you saw? Now do you see what Jack has become?_

 _You're in this deep yourself. What are you going to do?_

 _The only thing that can be done._

The decision she made right then and there sat in her stomach like bad oysters, but she frankly liked it that way for now. It was something that she could channel, use to fuel her determination to take the next step. With the care and concern of a mother laying their infant down to rest, she used Fio's embrace to hoist her up and drag her along, still asleep, to the couch before lying the recovering victim of tragedy down and tucking her in with the blanket. For some reason, a little piece of Angela's subconscious demanded she take note that the blanket in question was a hand-stitched afghan.

Whatever that notion was, however, simply had to wait as Angela looked over her shoulder at the door leading to Jack's room. In an instant as her expression hardened, her feelings of sweet, empathetic gentleness were overtaken by the sour, enraged bite of venom on her tastebuds. As she made her way over to the door, another piece of her subconscious pushed in its contribution to her stirring mind.

She shook her head and seethed at the thought: Earlier, she'd been reminded of what she considered the traits of a monster. The ashes of good men, the drive past a point where there was no coming back, the horrible things that they did to innocent people, and who she had branded those traits onto.

The reason why she was about to enter, she knew, was proof that she'd been right. As such, it was time to brand another.


End file.
